Book Eczema Psoriazis

The contents of this book are for informational purposes
only and are not intended to be a substitute for professional

medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. These presentations
do not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified
health provider with any questions you may have regarding
a medical condition.
DAY 1
SETTING THE STAGE & PRIMARY ROOT
CAUSES
01 Ryan and Teddy Sternagel
Setting the Stage and Primary Root Causes with Ryan and Teddy
Sternagel
Key principles of The Stern Method
Healing skin disease is a two-way street
Potential root causes of skin disease
11 Sabrina and Eric Zielinski, DC

Setting the Stage and Primary Root Causes with Dr. Eric and
Sabrina Zielinski
Importance of skin health
“Leaky skin” and the gut-brain-skin axis
DIY segment: Making a healing carrier oil
25 Sheila Kilbane, MD
Eczema 101
Common eczema triggers
Importance of digestion
Steps for decreasing eczema and reducing overall inflamma-
tion
39 Caroline Frenette
9 Misconceptions About Rosacea
The truth about rosacea
How to shift from incurable to healable
Tuning into your inner healer
DAY 2
ENVIRONMENTAL TOXINS & TRIGGERS

Environmental Toxins and Triggers with Ryan and Teddy
Sternagel
Common environmental and household toxins
Toxins: A root cause and trigger
What causes eczema flares?

Environmental Toxins and Triggers with Dr. Eric and Sabrina
Zielinski
Avoiding chemicals in body care and cleaning products
Must-have ingredients for at-home DIY
DIY segment: Making healthy hand soap and bathroom cleaner
87 Aimee Carlson and Naomi Damask

Should You Be Counting Chemicals?
Root cause of disease and inflammation
Avoid these toxins to reduce skin disease flares
3 simple steps for healing your cells
99 Marisol Teijeiro, ND
3 Skin System Secrets
Importance of what you put on your body
Why your skin is the last place to heal
Do you need another healing system?
DAY 3
BACTERIA, FUNGI & INFLAMMATION

Bacteria, Fungi and Inflammation with Ryan and Teddy
Sternagel
Treating skin infections
Strategies for balancing the skin microbiome
Leaky skin and leaky gut: A two-way street

Bacteria, Fungi and Inflammation with Dr. Eric and Sabrina
Zielinski
Connection between Candida and skin disease
Managing yeast infections with essential oils
DIY segment: Making a skin healing serum and infection-fight-
ing capsules
149 Kiran Krishnan

The Gut-Skin Connection
How post-biotics and the microbiome impact your skin and
inflammation
Building resilience in the skin and immune system
Gut modulation for healthy skin
167 Amy Rawls, MS, RD, LD, FMNS, CGN

Digestive Enzymes for Ultimate Skin Health
Why you need enzyme support
Connection to skin health
Choosing a quality supplemental enzyme
DAY 4
MOISTURIZING & SYMPTOM
MANAGEMENT
Moisturizing and Symptom Management with Ryan and Teddy
Sternagel
Managing your symptoms to facilitate healing
Moisturizing techniques: Lotions, wet wraps and hydrocolloids
Healing baths and clothing

Moisturizing and Symptom Management with Dr. Eric and Sabri-
na Zielinski
Importance of moisturizing your skin
Tips for managing nagging symptoms
DIY segment: Making soothing compresses and moisturizing
emollients
219 Brian Vaszily

Essential Secrets for Achieving Your Healthiest, Youngest-Looking
Skin
Why what you “feed” your skin matters
Easiest health improvement you’ll ever make
Nature’s most effective skin ingredients
235 Suzanne Marlowe

How CBD Can Help Manage Eczema, Psoriasis and Autoimmunity
The endocannabinoid system: Your body’s master regulator
Healing your skin from the inside out
4 critical CBD standards
DAY 5
LIGHT THERAPIES & SKIN
DETOXIFICATION
Light Therapies and Skin Detoxification with Ryan and Teddy
Sternagel
Healing power of light
Light therapy devices
Skin detoxification strategies

Light Therapies and Skin Detoxification with Dr. Eric and Sabrina
Zielinski
The “missing link” in your detox protocol
Safe, effective detox strategies for everyone
DIY segment: Making a detox water drink and soothing detox
bath
279 Jaime Boyachek, BSN, RN, FNLP, CTNC

Filling in the Gap in Your Skin Health
How the liver impacts your skin’s health
Liver support for effective detoxification
Steps for improving your skin
297 Robyn Openshaw

Why Heat is the Solution You’re Missing for Excellent Skin Health
Discover an ancient method of healing
Science behind saunas and skin health
Best sauna for your improving health
DAY 6
FOOD TRIGGERS & SUPPLEMENTS

Food Triggers and Supplements with Ryan and Teddy Sternagel
Identifying your unique biochemical needs
Foods that trigger eczema
Healing the gut: Food, freedom and supplements

Food Triggers and Supplements with Dr. Eric and Sabrina Zielinski
Avoiding the most common food triggers
Gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free foods that are full of flavor!
DIY segment: Making healthy sugar replacements
349 Peter Osborne, DC, DACBN, PScD

Role of Food and Nutrients
Why food is a major trigger for skin disease
Essential nutrients for skin health
Medications to avoid
381 Cristina Marie

How Supplementation Impacts Eczema, Psoriasis and Other Skin
Disorders
Connection between vitamin C, vitamin D and turmeric
Using supplements to help heal skin disorders
Importance of bioavailability and absorption
DAY 7
ADVANCED STRATEGIES & PROTOCOLS
389 Ryan Sternagel and Sheila Kilbane, MD

Advanced Strategies and Protocols
Integrative approaches to healing eczema
Addressing the skin and gut microbiome
Understanding the skin-gut-brain axis

Healing with Rocky
Behind-the-scenes look at Rocky in his home environment
Real-time analysis of Rocky’s lab work with Dr. Sheila Kilbane
Integrative approach to healing eczema
415 Amber Krogsrud, BSc, ND

Candida, Histamine and Peptide Therapy
Link between Candida and eczema
Exploring the histamine/hormone connection
Peptide therapy for skin health
431 Nathan Crane

Solutions for Skin Cancer
Causes of skin cancer
Natural and proven ingredients for healing skin cancer
How to prevent and reverse all types of cancer
SETTING THE STAGE AND
PRIMARY ROOT CAUSES
Guest: Ryan and Teddy Sternagel
Ryan: Hi. We are Ryan and Teddy Sternagel. And I never thought we’d be
saying this, but we’re really excited to be here today talking to you about
everything we’ve learned firsthand when it comes to how to look at and
approach eczema in this first lesson of the Eczema, Psoriasis, and Skin
Disease Masterclass, Setting the Stage and Primary Root Causes.
If you are going through a skin condition outside of eczema, I would
highly encourage you to still watch our portion of the class. Because
from everything we’ve learned, there is a whole lot of crossover between
eczema and things like psoriasis, rosacea, and other skin conditions with
the potential autoimmune component to them.
But also definitely check out what Dr. Eric and Sabrina Zielinski are doing
with their portion of the class is they’ve been covering skin conditions
overall like this for a long time. And if you’re going through eczema
specifically, for that matter, they’ve got a whole lot of DIY recipes, et
cetera, that will help across the board for the specific components we’re
going to be talking about with eczema, especially here.
Teddy: In December of 2019, I gave birth to our third son, Rocky,
naturally at a birth center, like our other two children, Ryder and
Channing. But 24 hours later, I developed a uterine infection that went
septic, and I was hospitalized and on antibiotics for three weeks, which
thankfully saved my life. But we also believe were the cause of Rocky
developing high-grade eczema at only a couple months old.
We were aware that eczema could get bad, but we had no clue there
was this whole grading system or that it could get as severe as Rocky’s
did and lead to so much suffering. You may also be aware that this is not
1
our first rodeo with healing our child of a severe chronic condition.
Seven years before we were beginning to realize Rocky’s condition was
very serious and wouldn’t be going away on its own, our son, Ryder, was
being diagnosed with stage four cancer.
That’s a whole other story in and of itself that led us to putting out
information online, and you can see it on our website, thesternmethod.
com. But the reason we bring it up is that through that journey, we’ve
learned time and time again the value of a holistic approach, as in taking
the whole picture, natural, alternative, complementary, conventional, et
cetera, and seeing that there’s a time and a place for everything.
And that has really guided us in this new healing journey of high-grade
eczema, and this being our second time going through a major condition
firsthand, I think we’ve been able to nail down the primary things to be
focusing on with a very unique perspective that we’re really excited to be
laying out for you throughout this class.
Ryan: We should probably let you know that today Ryder is thriving and
the healthiest kid we know, but we’re not here today to focus on Ryder
or cancer, which, again, we do have a ton of information on our website
about. We’re here to talk about what we went through healing Rocky of
high-grade eczema, which you may quite literally painfully be aware is
not just a childhood condition, which we really didn’t know before this.
We’ve sent out weekly emails to over 100,000 people for a few years
now. And like I’ve been telling people, I’m known for writing a lot of
controversial emails, a lot of emotional emails, a lot of controversial and
emotional emails. And we get a ton of response from all of them.
But never have we received anywhere close to the level of feedback
we did when we started documenting the process of everything we
were going through with Rocky. And before we go on, instead of just
telling you about it, we wanted to give you an up-close look of what that
actually looked like for us early on.
Teddy: Six and a half years ago, our son Ryder was diagnosed with stage
four cancer at a year old. Fast forward, here we are. He’s doing great.
And our third baby, Rocky, just turned one, and we’re dealing with a
pretty serious autoimmune condition. It’s crazy. And even kind of déjà vu
for me to be sitting here, sharing this with you.
But given the emotional strain that this has put on our family this past
year and everything that we’re doing trying to heal Rocky, we feel like
it’s time to share what going through this has been like for us in hopes
that it helps just one family. And that was really our intention when
we started everything for Ryder was if it helped just one family, then it
would be worth it. And here we are, and we know that his journey has
impacted thousands of families.
So hopefully, one day, we’ll be able to say the same thing about Rocky’s
healing journey. What has made this particularly hard for us to open up
about is the feelings of shame and guilt. It feels like we know enough
that our kids shouldn’t be suffering from this and that we’ve taken
these drastic huge steps to make sure that none of our kids have to go
through what Ryder went through.
So it’s been a tough year. Rocky has eczema. And the eczema isn’t just a
little rash on his elbow or his knee. This is hybrid eczema diagnosed by
dermatologists and pediatricians, and it’s all over his body. And when
he gets a flare-up, the itching is out of control. There’s sleepless nights.
They look like welts and burns, and they’re just all over. And it just seems
like nothing we do helps actually fix what’s happening.
We do feel like we know the cause. When I had about a month left to go
on the pregnancy, I started getting sick and had a chronic ear infection
that I just could not shake. I had never experienced that level of pain up
until that point, at least. So when I delivered him, everything seemed
fine at that time.
We had him naturally in a birth center like the other two kids and went
home the same day, a few hours later. And we had our whole family
together, and the kids were enjoying their brand new baby brother, and
everything seemed great.
Twenty-four hours later, things started to go downhill very quickly for us
when I started experiencing truly intense pain that I can’t even describe.
It was like the right side of my body was shutting down, and I felt like I
couldn’t move, but at the same time, somebody was running a knife into
me.
So I went to bed and, in the middle of the night, started feeling like this
isn’t normal, but I kept telling myself, okay, this is my third pregnancy.
And everyone says that you experience cramps more on your third baby.
So I thought that’s all that it was. So we got to morning and realized that
something still just wasn’t right. And we needed to get to the hospital.
By the time we got to the hospital, I had a high fever, which I didn’t have
at home. And as it turned out, I had a uterine infection that went septic.
Thirty percent of women who get this don’t make it. So it’s a really big
deal. Being in the hospital, we asked if we could do IVC. They said no.
And I was immediately put on very high dosages of antibiotics.
We consulted with numerous doctors, both conventional and
integrative, because obviously we had this beautiful newborn baby boy,
and we didn’t know what to do as far as if I should be nursing him or if
he should be getting formula. So after talking to all of these people, it
seemed like, at the time, the right decision was to nurse him if I could. I
wasn’t in a position where I could have pumped. He just basically laid in
the hospital bed beside me.
We were there for a week, and we were there over Christmas. And when
we got out, I was on two more weeks of oral antibiotics this time. In the
3
hospital, I was on IV antibiotics for a week. And so we believe that that
event, which destroys everything in your gut, also destroyed everything
in Rocky’s gut. And here we are a year later, and he has eczema
everywhere.
[10:00]
I never understood how much suffering went along with it until now.
This past year, we’ve worked remotely with doctors, but nothing has
really seemed to help him. We have dozens of topical creams, but we
know like Ryder, there’s just not a silver bullet, and it’s not an overnight
fix.
We started noticing it when Rocky was about a month old. It started with
a rash on his forehead, like a Batman-shaped rash. And from there, the
rashes started developing on the rest of his body. And ironically, this one
cleared up, but not from any creams.
I was smothering it in oatmeal creams, and nothing made it go away
until one day, that one started going away. But then his whole body just
started flaring up, and pediatrician said it’s classic eczema, but he would
probably grow out of it. Fast forward to several months later, and the
eczema continued to get worse and worse.
And we took him to a dermatologist to find out that Rocky has the kind
of eczema that he’s not going to just grow out of. And it’s just caused
conventionally by bad luck, which is so familiar to what we experienced
when Ryder was diagnosed. And the cancer was just bad luck. And
there’s nothing that you can do.
With conventional medicine, all they can offer are steroids or topical
non-steroid creams that also come with plenty of side effects and don’t
do anything to actually address the cause. So basically, if you stop using
it, the flare-ups come right back and even worse than before because
you’re basically suppressing them back into the body that’s trying to
purge them out.
Knowing what we know, we really do believe that we have the answer as
to what caused it, being exposed to that level of antibiotics from such a
young age. Obviously, it’s not the lifestyle we live. We’ve done so much
to create a nontoxic healing environment for Ryder and for our other
kids to thrive in, so we don’t believe it’s environmental factors.
So how are we healing? Well, we found a doctor that is close to us in
the same town that we’re working with, who is addressing the antibiotic
damage in me. And in turn, me giving that to Rocky, who is still nursing.
I’m on this big candida protocol, and Rocky is as well.
So it’s great having somebody here that can actually see him and see
our progress or our steps backwards, which right now it feels like we’ve
taken a giant step back. Something has recently flared him up, and we
don’t know exactly what that is. I’ve eliminated gluten, soy, dairy, corn,
and eggs. But most recently, like within the last several days, I’ve also
eliminated yeast, which I think may have contributed to this last flare-up.
We’re currently managing his symptoms with oatmeal baths every night,
red light therapy. We also have a BIOPTRON light. We have a ton of
different creams, and we’ve also discovered ozone oils, but at the end
of the day, something inside of his body is causing this. And that’s why
we’re trying to heal him from the inside out because, really, his skin is a
reflection of the havoc that’s going on inside of his body.
So what does a typical day look like for us? Well, it starts off very early
in the morning or basically doesn’t end when we go to bed; however,
you want to look at that. But when we go to bed, I have to hold Rocky
so that he doesn’t scratch. Sometimes we put him in this wet wrap, this
wet suit that keeps his wounds moist and creates more of a healing
environment, and helps reduce itching.
And then fast forward to about three or four in the morning, Ryan will
wake up and take Rocky with him and go to the couch in the living room
and bounce him on the chair and see if he can get him to go back to
sleep for an hour or two and give me a little bit of a nap.
When Rocky wakes up from that, then Ryan brings him back to me, and
I sit up with him in the bed, nursing him back to sleep, and usually, we
can hang out there for about another hour. It’s really tough to see him
get to suffer.
And if you are a parent that’s ever experienced it, then I don’t have to tell
you that. You just know. So from Rocky waking up with me in bed, then
Ryan will take him back and put him in the backpack while we get the
other kids kind of ready to go in the morning with their breakfast.
Rocky has to be kept in the backpack with special sleeves on so that he
doesn’t scratch himself and create more rashes. And then I take Rocky
back, and I can usually get him a bit of a nap, but he has to be laying
down on me for that nursing. And we usually will do the BIOPTRON light
at the same time.
And then we do supervised floor time with him so that he’s not
scratching. And he gets to actually use his hands so that they’re not just
wrapped up in a suit all day, and he just doesn’t have the ability to use
them.
And then, in the evening time, we do a nightly bath with oatmeal, which
seems to help calm down the overall itching. And then when I can get
him to sleep, usually by nursing him, depending on how agitated he is,
sometimes it takes longer. Then I will sit there with him and do the red
light therapy before we go to bed.
So with Ryder, we made the decision when he was about a year old to
just start documenting everything. Because at that point, we really felt
like if it helps just one family, then that would be enough.
5
And here we are, again, going through something similar to our journey
with Ryder. And again, we’re feeling that call to be transparent and
document everything even if it helps just one family heal from this or
any autoimmune condition.
We have kept it mostly to ourselves. Obviously, we’ve made references
that he has eczema, but never to this degree of putting it all out there
because there has been those feelings of shame, which are things that
we need to deal with on our own. But those feelings aren’t going to help
Rocky or anyone else heal.
So we hope that by putting out our journey with him and documenting
everything that we’re doing along the way, like Ryder’s journey, we can
help someone else going through this. These are all chronic illnesses
where at the end of the day, we know that you just have to keep going,
and that’s what we’re going to do. And we really want you with us along
the way, sharing in this journey with us as we heal Rocky.
Of course, when we put that out, there were a whole lot of people
wishing us well and all that, but overwhelmingly, it was people who had
been going through eczema themselves in many cases for decades or
parents of children who had been going through it their whole lives
all to different degrees. But so many of them described this immense
suffering they’ve been going through for year after year with no relief.
And we just had no idea it was this prevalent of a thing. Cancer had been
such a major scar in our life to the point we basically viewed everything
through a cancer lens, but now this whole new world of eczema was
unfolding before our eyes. And it turns out there are almost twice as
many internet searches for eczema-related topics per month as there
are cancer.
And what really shocked us was that most of the people who wrote to us
about their own experiences with eczema and not being able to get past
it, to be frank, they were the type of people who have been on our email
list, meaning they’ve watched a whole lot of health events and they’re
doing their own research from a wide variety of sources.
And they’ve seen integrative and holistic doctors from a wide variety of
backgrounds, and they were still suffering.
Ryan: But what was also really neat was hearing from the people who
had healed. And I want to emphasize that people do heal from even the
worst cases of eczema, often after suffering for years. And so can you.
And all these people that wrote in, shared what they felt were the
biggest factors in their healing, and then getting to compile all those
messages and see what came up the most.
[20:00]
And then taking the knowledge of healing a chronic condition we already
had and overlay it with all this new information we were taking in on
eczema, between that and more importantly, finding an integrative
doctor who really understands just what eczema is and what it takes to
heal from it, we were able to put Rocky on the fast track to recovery.
Life went from being not just miserable morning to night, but 24 hours a
day because we were up all night with him itching and trying to tear out
himself to a much closer version of at least what we would call a normal
life relatively quickly.
And outside of that pre-existing knowledge of healing one chronic
disease combined with new firsthand experience, going through
another, we were able to make a system out of everything we will be
unfolding over the next several days together. And we really can’t wait
for you to see it because we really think it’s going to clear up a whole lot
of things and put everything into categories and a system that you can
manage.
Speaking of that doctor, her name is Sheila Kilbane. She’s a medical
doctor, and she just happens to be giving a presentation on her overall
approach to eczema as one of the featured videos on day one here. And
we’ll come back to that shortly.
But we also wanted to give you our own overview of how we’ve come to
see eczema and, more importantly, how we’ve approached it and what
we would do differently if we were to start over again knowing what we
know now.
Teddy: I think the biggest revelation we’ve had throughout this
experience actually flies in the face of what’s come to be conventional
wisdom within the natural health world, which is this notion that the skin
is a window to the gut.
And if you’ve got any sort of chronic skin condition like eczema,
psoriasis, rosacea, and so on, that you must be eating GMOs or
pesticides, and you just need to stop. Or you just need to eat some
more fermented foods and take some more probiotics or just pull foods
you’re sensitive to out of your diet, or just start doing castor oil packs.
And that’s all you need to do to heal.
And while that’s certainly a huge part of the equation, if it were really as
simple as that, we wouldn’t have had the hundreds of people writing us
that we did saying they’ve done enough gut healing for three lifetimes
and were still in absolute misery.
Ryan: Yeah. The truth is it’s more of a two-way street from what we’ve
come to find. Yes, you need to heal the gut to heal the skin, but you
also need to heal the skin to heal the gut. A huge part of eczema, in
particular, is a topical infection of the skin itself.
So if you’ve got a particularly nasty infection on your skin, you can do all
the gut-healing you want, but until that infection is treated in one way or
another, your skin isn’t going to heal, and more so that infection is going
7
to be sending inflammatory signals throughout the rest of your body,
gut included, and potentially even prevent it from healing all the way
itself.
So really, instead of this one way the skin is a window to the gut mantra,
it’s really a two-way street, and you need to be simultaneously healing
from the inside out and the outside in to give yourself the best chance
at a relatively quick success and avoid bouncing around from lotion to
lotion and treatment to treatment indefinitely.
There’s also the condition of leaky skin. If your skin is just wrecked from
external toxicants and is now sensitive to everything imaginable, same
thing. Even the smallest of triggers is going to set it off. That’s going to
set off an inflammatory cascade throughout the rest of your body. And
healing is not going to come easily.
Teddy: Now, this is not saying that there was not some sort of an
internal cause in the first place to make the skin susceptible to infection
or weak enough to become leaky. That more than likely was a big
factor. And it’s likely one or more of the primary culprits you hear about
on most interviews or events on autoimmune or really any chronic
condition.
Like we said, in Rocky’s case, we can be almost 100% certain enough
of the antibiotics I got after that infection made their way to his gut,
wiped out his gut flora and his gut lining, and led to an imbalance severe
enough to result in high-grade eczema. The point is that just healing the
gut wasn’t enough to fix the issue.
It’s only when we took this two-way street approach that things really
started to get better. And you very likely are dealing with a very different
root cause than antibiotic-induced gut dysbiosis, although it is a
common one.
And that’s what many of the bonus presentations to this class from all
of our many experts are for. Diving into these root causes, as they relate
to eczema and chronic skin conditions, and walking you through how
to identify and begin to reverse whatever particular ones might be the
biggest in your specific case.
Ryan: There is one root cause that is not a potential root cause for
many other chronic conditions that we should mention just for the
sake of completeness. And that is a SNP in the FLG gene. The FLG gene
is responsible for filaggrin production. Filaggrin plays a huge role in
keeping a good, strong skin barrier.
A whole lecture on genetics is outside the scope of what we’re doing
here, of course, but I did want to mention it again to be complete. And
it’s probably not something you’re going to hear about in more generic
healing conversations. So if you go through every potential root cause
and you feel like you’re still coming up short, you could go and get your
genetics tested and see if something is going on with your FLG gene.
If so, there is some research showing supplementing with L-histidine
can boost your filaggrin production even if you’ve got that SNP. Back to
the broader discussion of causes, what we’ve learned is what’s unique
about eczema is whatever the root cause, you’ve now got this topical
skin component that’s basically become a root cause all on its own. And
you’ve got to be focusing on both aspects simultaneously to heal.
Teddy: Take us, for instance, and this gets into what we would do
differently, starting all over again. Unlike when we were going through
cancer with Ryder, our first son, and had several strong suspicions on
what the primary causes could have been, but we’ll never know for sure.
But with Rocky, there’s almost no question in our minds. That when I got
that infection that led to me getting a ton of antibiotics, and then those
antibiotics made their way to Rocky and wiped out his gut and then led
to the high-grade eczema. But that said, even knowing the cause and
doing all the gut-healing stuff we’ve learned about over the years, again,
we were making very minimal progress.
We were trying all sorts of lotions and potions on top of this to try to
soothe at least some of the symptoms. And it was still just misery day
after day. It wasn’t until we started working with Dr. Sheila, and she
really laid out this understanding for us, that we turned a corner and are
happy to say today Rocky looks like the adorable kid we always knew he
was supposed to look like.
Ryan: So what we do differently today is really approach it in the way
that we have things laid out, which is why the topics of every day of
this class are what they are. We had a good understanding on what
our underlying root cause was. But if you don’t, you need to do some
thinking and perhaps consulting with a holistic doctor on that.
Remove all the environmental toxicants and triggers that are going to
be keeping your skin inflamed and keeping your body from healing.
Address the bacteria, fungi, and inflammation straight away that’s got
to get under control in a hurry like we talked about. Then start thinking
about moisturizing and symptom management because this still isn’t
going to be an overnight fix.
So we’ll show you all the best packs we’ve found for keeping comfortable
along the way. We’ve also implemented several light therapies in
addition to all of this because there’s incredible healing power to the
skin to be had there. So we definitely wanted to harness that.
You certainly can’t forget things like food intolerances and triggers and
supplements. Although we mentioned, and as we’ll talk about more, in
a lot of cases, these really aren’t the primary factors. And then you get
to the advanced strategies and protocols for the really severe cases like
ours.
[30:00]
9
Teddy: And that all sounds like a lot. And it was certainly a lot for us to
wait through. And there was a lot of trial and error in figuring out what
worked and what didn’t and what was appropriate in one situation but
not another and all of that.
But now that we’re here on the other side and can look back and reflect
on where we went off track and what we should have done differently,
we’re really excited to be using that insight to lay out everything in a way
that’s going to make a lot of sense and make all of this a lot easier on
you than it was for us.
SETTING THE STAGE AND
PRIMARY ROOT CAUSES
Guest: Eric and Sabrina Zielinski
Dr. Zielinski: Hello, and welcome to our eczema, psoriasis, and skin
disease masterclass. This is Lesson One, Setting the Stage and Primary
Root Causes. In this lesson, you’re going to learn about why skin health
is so important, the most common skin disorders, what “leaky skin” is
and why you need to know about it.
We will cover the gut-brain skin axis, and we’ll wrap up with a wonderful
DIY segment with my wife, Sabrina, to show you how to make a
healing carrier oil that is the base for many of our favorite skin healing
preparations. Ready to get started? So am I. But before you do, be sure
to get out a pen and notepad, because you’re going to want to take lots
of notes.
Importance of Skin Health
To begin, we need to understand why skin health is so important. Many

people don’t know this, but your skin is actually part of your immune
system. In fact, it’s the first line of defense in fighting infection. You can
think of your skin as a living, breathing hazmat suit, “hazmat” being the
abbreviation for hazardous materials, which is fitting, because that’s
exactly the role your skin plays in keeping you healthy.
It protects your body against airborne toxins and topical chemicals.

Also, the largest organ in the body, your skin, like a hazmat suit, forms a
waterproof mechanical barrier, which prevents harmful microorganisms
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that are constantly surrounding you from penetrating your skin and
going into your body, unless, of course, the barrier is broken, and this is
referred to as “leaky skin.” We’ll cover that in more detail later on.
Your skin acts as a physical barrier to protect against airborne toxins,

chemicals, and invading pathogens like bacteria, fungi, and viruses. If
this defense is broken, the second line of defense within your body is
activated, oftentimes triggering a systemic inflammatory response.
So, it makes sense that eczema and psoriasis, for instance, have an
autoimmune component to them, seeing how chronic inflammation is
the root cause of autoimmune. Same thing with immune dysfunction,
anxiety, depression, and really, most of your gut disorders like SIBO and
leaky gut.
All of these are inflammatory in nature and can be linked to your skin
health. In fact, there is a term for this connection. It’s known as the gut-
skin-brain access. And I’ll be discussing that in more detail as well.
The bottom line is that we all need to be focusing our attention on

maintaining solid skin health. Obviously, for people that suffer with
eczema, psoriasis, and other skin disorders, it’s top of mind.
But for everyone, as well, who wants to avoid systemic inflammation,

you need to consider skin health is absolutely vital if you want to enjoy
an abundant life free of chronic disease, which is why we feature
so many of our recipes and DIY hacks from our newest book in this
masterclass.
In The Essential Oils Apothecary, we cover advanced strategies and

protocols on how to use essential oils to successfully manage chronic
conditions like heart disease, depression, arthritis, fibromyalgia, COPD,
Alzheimer’s, fatty liver, and even cancer. And yes, it all starts with your
skin health, which is why we’re so excited to be sharing information
covered in this masterclass with you.
Lesson 1: Define Most Common Skin Disorders
Now, let’s define what skin disease is and what the signs and symptoms
are that you need to be looking out for. First off, just so we’re on the
same page, in this masterclass we’re covering chronic skin conditions,
not acute. Meaning, these are health issues that have lasted quite a
while and the medical community by and large regards them as not
curable. But, if you’ve followed our work for any length of time, you
know that we don’t receive a lifelong diagnosis without a fight.
Like any chronic condition, we believe that God has gifted our bodies
with the remarkable ability to heal itself under the right conditions, and
it’s our hope and prayer that you find the solutions that you’re looking
for in this class. If nothing else, you’ll learn time-tested, backed-by-
science home remedies to help you feel better and give you the tools
that you need to manage symptoms without having to worry about
dangerous side effects.
And one of the most common symptoms of skin disease is dermatitis.

It’s important to note that dermatitis and eczema are both generic
terms for inflammation of the skin. Generally, both words are used
interchangeably to describe a number of skin issues that consist of
rashes and red, dry patches of skin. Specific examples of eczema include
atopic dermatitis, contact dermatitis, and allergic contact dermatitis.
Atopic dermatitis usually develops in early childhood and is believed to

have a hereditary component. The main symptom is a rash that typically
appears on the arms and behind the knees, although it can appear
anywhere. Conventional treatment includes avoiding soaps and other
topical irritants. Certain creams or ointments also can provide relief
from itching. This form of eczema is long-lasting.
Contact dermatitis is a skin rash caused by contact with a known trigger.

This is more of an acute reaction. These triggers irritate the skin or
may also cause an allergic reaction. Common examples include soap,
cosmetics, fragrances, jewelry, and, of course, poison ivy. The main
symptom is a red rash wherever the skin comes into contact with the
irritant. Avoiding the irritant or allergen should allow the rash to clear in
a couple weeks, and creams and medications can reduce itching.
Now, allergic contact dermatitis is a combination of the two, meaning it

is a lifelong condition that is only triggered when your skin comes into
contact with an allergen.
Psoriasis is another inflammatory skin condition. It produces thick red

plaques covered with silvery scales. Known triggers include infection,
stress, and cold temperatures. The most common symptom is a rash
on the skin, but sometimes the rash involves nails and joints as well.
Conventional treatment aims to remove scales and stop skin cells from
growing so quickly. Topical ointments, light therapy and medications can
offer some relief as well.
Lichen planus is a chronic inflammatory skin disease causing an
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itchy, non-infectious rash on arms and legs. It consists of small, flat-
topped, multi-sided pink or purple bumps. Lichen planus usually goes
away on its own, but if symptoms are bothersome, topical creams
and oral antihistamines may help. Skin experts believe it might be an
autoimmune disease.
In fact, the same with eczema and psoriasis. Both are now considered
to be autoimmune conditions by many experts, which can really help
narrow down common root causes and treatment plans.
Another common skin condition people suffer from is acne. This occurs
when hair follicles become plugged with oil and dead skin cells, causing
whiteheads, blackheads, or pimples. Now, although largely affecting
teenagers, about 20 percent of all cases occur in adults, and there’s
actually a known connection between acne, anxiety, and gut health. This
goes back to the gut-skin-brain axis that I mentioned earlier.
Rosacea is a common disorder that mainly affects skin on the face. It

causes redness on the nose, chin, cheeks, and forehead. Rosacea most
commonly affects middle-aged women with fair skin, and it could be
mistaken for acne or other skin conditions, and treatments such as
antibiotics or anti-acne medication can control and reduce symptoms.
Left untreated, it tends to worsen over time.
Urticaria is a skin rash triggered by a reaction to food, medication, or

other irritants. If left unchecked, it can develop into chronic hives, which
is a common skin rash triggered by many of the same things, including
inflammatory foods, medications, and severe stress. Symptoms include
itchy, raised red or skin-colored welts on the skin surface. Hives usually
goes away without treatment, but antihistamine medications are often
helpful in improving symptoms.
And last is vitiligo. When skin loses melanocytes, or pigment cells,

the result is discolored patches in different areas of the body. Loss of
skin color is relatively common, and it can affect any part of the body,
including the mouth, hair, and even eyes. However, it is generally more
noticeable in people with darker skin. Treatment may improve the
appearance of the skin but doesn’t cure the disease.
So, is it eczema or psoriasis? Is it acne or rosacea? Does it even matter?

Well, yes and no. Now, keep in mind a proper diagnosis for skin disease,
like any health condition, is absolutely critical to curate the best healing
protocol. Otherwise, you’ll be shooting blind, so to speak, and may
even cause more harm than good if you end up not treating your skin
properly.
With that said, if you can narrow down your condition to being chronic
and inflammatory in nature, the use of natural emollients and nontoxic
moisturizers will not only provide protection but also much needed
relief to reduce skin dryness, inflammation, and itching.
In fact, everyone with chronic inflammatory skin conditions will benefit

from the following: using a humidifier in your home; avoiding hidden
toxins, irritants, and triggers; taking lukewarm showers, not too cold
or not too hot; eating an anti-inflammatory diet and taking certain
supplements; wearing soft, non-irritating clothing; moisturizing your skin
regularly with non-toxic products; soothing the skin with compresses
and wraps; fighting infection naturally with essential oils and herbs. And
showing you how to do all these things is exactly what you’ll be learning
in this masterclass.
[10:15]
Let’s take a closer look at eczema, which affects more than 10 percent
in the entire U.S. population. Globally, about 20 percent of all children
and 3 percent of the entire adult population are also affected. It may
be of interest to note that eczema is a burden that falls specifically on
healthcare workers. Nearly 25 percent of nurses are affected because of
frequent handwashing with antibacterial products and use of protective
gloves.
Sadly, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to increased instances of skin

irritation and eczema in healthcare workers, primarily because of
prolonged use of personal protective equipment and the chronic levels
of stress that exacerbates eczema. We’re seeing the same thing with the
general public, as cases are currently skyrocketing as stress and anxiety
increases.
As expected, because of the environmental triggers in toxic body care

products commonly sold in these areas, those who live in developed
countries or colder climates also suffer from eczema more commonly
than others. Common symptoms include red patches, itching, cracked
skin, small, raised bumps, and sensitive and dry skin. Generally speaking,
medical treatments include antibiotics, corticosteroids, and the lifestyle
changes that I just mentioned, like wearing soft, non-irritating clothes
and taking warm showers.
It is important to reiterate that even though the symptoms may vary,
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the treatment for most chronic skin disorders are oftentimes the same.
We have found that the key is to stop known triggers. That’s absolutely
critical. Soothe the symptoms naturally, and come up with solutions
to manage flare-ups. This is why we cover our favorite do-it-yourself
natural living tips in lessons two, three, four, five, and six, to help you
overcome the signs, symptoms, and triggers of chronic skin disease.
Now that we’ve covered what skin disease is, let’s address why you
may be suffering. Truth is, there are a myriad of root causes linked to
eczema, psoriasis, and inflammatory skin conditions. Sadly, it could be
difficult to nail down which one is the primary trigger. Yet, all of these
should be on your list to investigate.
Cold water, hard water, genetics--for example, the gene that encodes
filaggrin--antibacterial, dehydrating body care products, smoking, topical
allergens found in your clothes and laundry detergent, inflammatory
food allergens with gluten, sugar, and dairy topping the list, and
infection, which can be bacterial, fungal, or viral.
In the other videos featured in this lesson, you’ll learn more about these
top triggers, as well as others, and Mama Z and I will walk you through
how to avoid them in future lessons.
“Leaky Skin” Explained
It’s important to note that when you are suffering from dermatitis,
your skin cells are less tightly held together. And this allows for
the penetration of allergens and toxins, which can cause systemic
inflammation. And if left unchecked, this leads to leaky skin.
What’s leaky skin, you may be wondering? Well, you may have heard
the term “leaky gut.” That’s a well-known health condition that
describes abnormal permeability in your intestinal lining. Under normal
conditions, this lining forms an impenetrable barrier that regulates
what is absorbed into your bloodstream. However, a compromised or
permeable gut lining permits toxins, undigested food particles, and bad
bacteria to leak in and then move throughout your body and throughout
your bloodstream.
In much the same way, you can damage your skin, which can lead to
leaky skin. If your skin microbiome, which are the microorganisms that
normally live on your skin, is off balance, your skin’s natural barrier can
be compromised.
In other words, your skin becomes permeable to dangerous chemicals
and pathogens, and this leads to inflammation, which can contribute
to skin conditions like acne, eczema, and psoriasis, as well as chronic
conditions like anxiety, depression, heart disease, arthritis, gut
disorders, and autoimmunity.
And let’s not forget to address the mental health component of skin
disease. The argument can be made that emotional stress is actually
the number one cause of chronic disease, including skin disorders,
worldwide. In the United States, for instance, it has been reported that
75 to 90 percent of all doctors’ visits and as much as 90 percent of illness
and disease are stress related.
Like we cover in our new book, The Essential Oils Apothecary, according
to the National Institute of Mental Health, chronic, unresolved stress
can damage our immune, digestive, and reproductive systems and
disrupt sleep. That’s why long-standing stress has been linked to
chronic diseases such as heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, obesity,
menstrual problems, acne, eczema, and mental health disorders like
anxiety and panic attacks. This brings us to the gut-brain-skin axis.
Gut-Brain-Skin Axis
As we have just learned, skin health is intricately connected to virtually

every aspect of your health. Eighty years ago, dermatologist Dr. Donald
Pillsbury and Dr. John Stokes first proposed a link between digestive
health, depression, anxiety, and skin conditions such as acne.
Known as the gut-brain-skin axis theory, this connection is understood

to be a two-way street, where an emotional disorder can negatively
affect your gut microbiome, which can increase intestinal permeability
causing leaky gut, and then contributing to systemic inflammation.
And vice versa. Your microflora balance can impact your emotional
health, because these vitally important good bacteria produce
neurotransmitters or chemical messengers that play a role in mood and
cognitive function.
So in summary, gut disease and mental health issues contribute to

chronic inflammatory skin disorders, and skin disorders contribute to
gut disease and mental health issues. Now there’s a lot more to learn
about the primary root causes of eczema, psoriasis, and skin disorders,
and I’ll refer you to the other videos in this lesson to go deeper.
Well, that’s it. That’s a wrap. Now, let’s make some DIY goodies with
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Mama Z from our book, The Essential Oils Apothecary.
Mama Z’s Oil Base
Sabrina: I am so excited to share with you my oil base. This is probably,

I don’t know, probably the biggest recipe that I came up with because,
well, we needed each and every element of it, and we use it in so many
products.
So a little backstory on that. When you look at the recipe, there’s 54

ounces of coconut oil, and people are always like, “Why is it 54?” Well, at
the time, that was the size jar that they had at the store.
So, as you can see, our coconut oil is liquid. You never want to have it on
the stove or in a microwave, or any other place. You want to fill a sink of
hot water and let it go to liquid. And that is what we do with our coconut
oil.
All the other ones are liquid. So I have a few variations, but I can’t wait to
talk about this recipe because it’s so important for your skin. There’s so
many reasons why it’s important.
Dr. Z: Yep. It’s the foundational recipe. And I have something to share.
Go here. This is a testimonial. It’s a big testimonial that I want to read
to you, because it just epitomizes this natural living lifestyle that we’ve
been working on since we’ve been married.
So this recipe is really setting the foundation for many of the things that
we do. And you’ll find that you could use this for a number of things.
This is the base for 99 percent of your body care. And that’s why we
include this recipe. In and of itself, it’s healing, with or without essential
oils.
What I want to do is I want to share something from Patricia really

briefly here, to explain why we do what we do, but more importantly
to hopefully give you a little motivation. And maybe you can relate to
one of these things. And there’s many. There’s 17 things, actually, that
Patricia talks about with how using essential oils to give her household a
makeover changed her life and her family’s life.
And it really starts with this. It starts with simple, a few different
ingredients, combining them together, and being diligent in making
them and preparing yourself. We talk a lot about the five Ps. Proper
planning prevents--
Sabrina: Poor performance.
Dr. Z: Getting ready, we always have this on hand. We’re ready for
things in case something were to happen. And when, you name it, when
there’s a rush to the store, when all sanitizer and hand soaps are off the
shelves, we’re okay, because we have things in stock and we know how
to do it.
But this is from Patricia. Especially for those of you who are battling
eczema, psoriasis, or a skin disorder, you’re really going to resonate with
this. Patricia said: “I had full eczema, psoriasis since birth. So many trials
and errors, to no avail.” By chance, she searched our recipes, and she
made two roller bottles. “They help my grandchildren considerably.” And
she goes on to talk about her grandchildren, because her grandchildren
were battling some of the same things.
“The roller bottles disappeared,” she said. That was actually a problem.
“My granddaughter liked it so much, and the pink roller bottle, that she
took it home. At that time, both of the backs of her knees were cracked
and scabbing. Desperation and speed simply applying shea butter”--
that’s how she started--“that was a Friday night. By Saturday morning,
incredible difference.”
And then, Patricia put shea butter onto her grandson’s elbows,
and by Sunday afternoon, both grandchildren showed remarkable
improvement. He is nine, nine years old, and has had full eczema-
psoriasis like she did since he’s been a baby. Nothing touched it but this.
[20:00]
She says, “I cannot say it is gone, and may not be ever, but there is
a visible difference on both my children, my grandchildren. And just
simply using plain shea butter made the world of difference.” And she
just loves natural remedies. And now, when you’re adding essential oils,
you just add more healing to it.
“This past week,” she says, “I made one gallon of liquid castile soap. I
also made three gallons of Mama Z’s laundry soap.” She’s been faithful,
and she’s been a faithful Tide user for many years. “With three loads of
laundry”…you haven’t even heard this yet.
Sabrina: Nope.
Dr. Z: You’re gonna love this. “Three loads of laundry in, so far so good
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with your laundry detergent.” Again, why do we use homemade laundry
detergent? Especially with people with eczema, psoriasis, and skin
disease, what’s on your skin, those chemical surfactants, that could
cause that, by the way.
Sabrina: Yes. Right.
Dr. Z: And stopping that chemical onslaught can help heal it.
Granddaughter came home from school. Lice. “Two weeks after our
book arrived, I used Mama Z’s lice shampoo and conditioner with
white vinegar combing. Gone in one week. No lice, no nits. Used both
granulated sugar and coconut sugar hair sprays, peppermint essential
oil in one for outdoors. Patchouli, which is her signature scent for other
times that work incredibly well, and not sticky, and it doesn’t attract
bugs. Now not to be outdone,” she says, “nor left out”…she’s so funny. I
love her writing. She should be a writer. She is.
“My tea tree plant acquired white fly, and our potted lemon tree
acquired scale.” Back to our website, Natural Living Family. And plant
pests gone. “Mama Z’s recipe to the rescue. Both plants are healthy and
happy again.” Now, Mama Z’s toothpaste. She loves the spearmint and
mouthwash. “Both work incredibly well and easy to make.”
Healing serum. We’ll talk more about that in a future lesson. Healing
serum has helped her husband with his forehead. He had dry, tiny
sores. All gone. That, we call it Mama Z’s skin healing serum for a reason.
Again, same person. Same person.
So many inhalers for different things. Using them, safe and effective
for arthritis, finger joints, chronic neck pain. So many things. Mosquito
roller bottles. The list goes on. She says, “I carry a small pump, a bottle,
of hand sanitizer and another of soap.” She goes, “I know what’s in mine.
Basically, I’m not trusting the chemicals that are at the store.”
Brings a tear to my eyes. The changes that can happen, once you
incorporate this lifestyle. This recipe will take you five minutes to make,
but it’s starting. This is one of those quick wins once you get the ball
rolling.
Sabrina: Yes.
Dr. Z: Maybe you could be like Patricia and have these wonderful,
wonderful stories. She gets kidded around for being an essential oil
junkie and that she needs a self-help program, but I also know who they
ask for help when someone needs help, and I get that. You don’t have
to be a doctor. You don’t have to have initials after your name or before
your name to be able to be a healer and to help people.
Sabrina: Yes.
Dr. Z: She loves your essential oil-scented body powder. “Your dry
shampoo’s so effective. Athlete’s foot preventer, it helped. Just so many
things. So many things. I can go on and on and on, but I’m a firm believer
in essential oils. They simply work, and they’re affordable.”
And they’re affordable because if you noticed what Patricia did, she gave
her whole home a makeover piece by piece by piece by piece. And quite
frankly, we believe it starts with this. That’s why we’re talking about this
now.
This is a foundational recipe that once you get this down, you could
start to experimenting. And next thing you know, your whole body
care repertoire will be absolutely enhanced with the healing power of
essential oils. So, with that, wow. Isn’t that special?
Sabrina: It was special, and I can tell you, each of those things that she
talked about, each of those recipes, brought back the actual story that
brought out that particular recipe, from the lice to the this…I mean, oh,
my goodness. It’s definitely a fun world when you have a bunch of kids
and you get to experience a lot of good stuff.
Well, I want to go jump right into this recipe. We have our warmed
coconut oil, 54 ounces. Again, you can always modify that. And I’m going
to give you a few modifications at the end when I put this together.
And depending on the brand, depending on…everything I always use
is organic, so I don’t go ahead and then say it every single time, but
everything is organic. Sixteen ounces of almond oil. And it will all depend
on what color it comes out with. It’ll be something in this neck of the
woods.
Dr. Z: This is our reserves, right?
Sabrina: Yes. Yes. And if you change an ingredient, it could slightly

modify that color. All right. We’ve got our eight ounces of our organic
jojoba oil. And I did mention it earlier. When I talk about this, I talk about
it each time, is the vitamin E that is just a vitamin E and nothing else. It
has no carriers or anything else. Of course, you can use one that has
carrier oil. This one is just a touch more expensive, but I really feel like
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it’s worth every penny of it.
Now, a few things that you can add…or take away a little bit of coconut
oil in order to make this. So if you have any healing going on or any
fungal issues or anything like that, I add organic, cold-pressed evening
primrose oil in with that. That helps a lot.
Also, for a vitamin A--we have the E and the A--and we talk about when I
burned my face with chemical products, just a chemical burn, a reaction
to skin, many, many years ago when I was little. And I used vitamin E
and A to help build the back of my skin back together. So when you
have healing that’s going on, adding an ounce of your rosehip--organic
rosehip seed oil--is a great way to go.
Now, in the winter months, especially if you live in a cold-weather area,

anything that’s going to be below 70 degrees, or even if you keep your
air conditioning going crazy, this will change. It’ll be lumpier. It’ll be
halfway between liquid and solid. So if you do want to make sure that
you keep it more liquid, this is what we do in the winter time. I take out
some of the ounces that I have of the coconut oil and I use the shea nut
oil. The organic shea nut oil is so important because it keeps everything
more liquid.
And, of course, you could add other carrier oils, but I picked these
because I wanted to hit all the different levels of the dermis of the skin.
Ones that are really thin oils all the way to the thicker oils so that you
really cover all of the areas of your skin in the different levels of your
skin, so you can have more healing throughout every area. We mix all of
these together and it comes out just like this.
I put these right into glass jars, always, and then I date the bottom so I
know when it was so that I can pull the next one out. We use this all year
round. One of our favorite recipes is our Joyful.
Dr. Z: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Sabrina: And with one ounce of our oil base, you use three to four
drops of orange and three to four drops of vanilla, and it makes the
best, most joyful fragrance. We use that on the children. I never had any
postpartum depression, which my mom had. And that was something
that we prayed about. But I researched the oils, and that was what
coming up over and over again. And we’ve always had very happy,
healthy babies as well. So that’s just a start of many of the products that
we make with the oil base.
And I’m excited to hear what else you use in it, and you’ll definitely see it
over and over again on our website, but it’s one of the most important
ones. It’s one you can have on hand, and it’s one that will help change
your family’s life and your health.
Dr. Z: So when you store this, oftentimes it will harden. So what you
simply do is you could put it in your sink. You could get some warm
water into your sink, and you can just let this soften that way. That’s the
easiest way, by the way, or put a pot filled with warm water and put this
inside to soften it.
And a note on the vanilla, just so you know. It’s not vanilla extract that
you get. It’s not food based. This is vanilla oil resin, vanilla CO2 extract,
or vanilla absolute. So that is the aroma therapy version of that. It is
consumable, but the orange and vanilla essential oil actually has been
shown--we talk about that in The Essential Oils Apothecary--this mixture
has been clinically shown to help people overcome being burnt out and
overwhelmed and hopeless.
They actually did a hopelessness study, and they found that this blend
of essential oil helps people overcome that. And, by the way, especially
right now in 2021, who hasn’t dealt with a little bit of hopelessness or
overwhelm? So this blend can help.
So, wonderful base. Make sure you make at least a batch or two. And
just so you know, this is a large amount. If you don’t want it, this amount,
you can cut the recipe in half, or--
Sabrina: It makes great gifts.
Dr. Z: Exactly. You stole my thunder. Hey, look at this. Put a nice bow
on it. Give someone a couple essential oil bottles. You’ve got Christmas,
Hannukah. You’ve got birthdays. DIY. Who wouldn’t love a homemade
gift from someone that’s a little beautified and looking great?
Sabrina: Right.
Dr. Z: But this is the basis for all of, or not all, many of our body care
recipes, but this could be your key to proper skin moisturization. And
we know, we know, that for proper immune function we need our
skin intact. For eczema, psoriasis, and skin disorders, you need proper
moisturization.
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[30:00]
These oils are so healing. Then when you add essential oils like how
we show you to do, that just takes it to another level with an antifungal
component, antiviral, and antibacterial. So enjoy. Be sure you make this
as soon as you can.
Sabrina: Yes.
Dr. Z: And start having fun and experimenting.
Sabrina: Absolutely. And the last note, just make sure again that you
add your essential oils right before you’re going to use them instead
of storing them with the essential oils in them. Keep it the oil base,
and then that way, you know exactly when you put the final product
together.
Dr. Z: Yep.
ECZEMA 101
Guest: Sheila Kilbane, MD
Dr. Kilbane: Hi, I’m Dr. Sheila Kilbane. I’m an integrative pediatrician
here in Charlotte, North Carolina. I’m delighted to be doing this summit.
I’m going to talk about Eczema 101. Over the past almost 20 years, after
seeing thousands of patients, I’ve developed a program that helps heal
and prevent the top most common childhood illnesses, eczema being
one of them. I’m going to share with you today some of the things that
I have learned. And I’m going to teach you how to look at the triggers of
you or your child’s eczema.
The reason I’m doing this summit is I helped a family, Rocky Sternagel.
And as you can see from his before and after picture, he had pretty
severe eczema. And the Sternagels are one of the co-hosts of this
summit. And when we started working with their son, they had tried
everything. He was on a very restrictive diet, they were on all kinds of
supplements, and had tried everything they knew to do, but his eczema
persisted. And we walked them through the process that I use in my
practice.
And as you can see from the photo, it’s only about six weeks apart, and
Rocky had had eczema since birth. So we’re going to talk through these
triggers and how to work through that. And what we’re going to do is
we’re going to look at it also from a more mild standpoint. So I’m going
to do another talk with Ryan, do tune in to the other talk that I do with
Ryan during this summit, about what we did with Rocky. And that will be
for the more severe cases.
25
So you saw that red, kind of angry, that can be much more severe
eczema. And what we’re talking about, as you can see in this picture, this
is a patient from my clinic, and it’s more mild. And it’s not as in depth a
treatment to help to improve these type of symptoms. So this is what
we’re talking about in this particular talk. The objectives today, we’re
going to go through the triggers of eczema, the importance of digestion,
which that can often be overlooked.
We talk a lot about gut health and leaky gut and we talk a lot about
supplements and taking foods out of the diet. But we also really want to
focus on improving digestion. And then we’re going to go through the
steps to decrease eczema and reduce overall systemic inflammation.
And I can’t go through all of the steps in depth during this talk, I’m going
to give you an overview. And then I have a lot of resources that you can
use to uncover the triggers of your eczema or your child’s eczema.
My goal, anytime I do a talk, is to people from either not knowing

what they don’t know, to having too much information and being up
on Dr. Google all night long and going from specialist to specialist, to
having useful data. What is the strategic plan? And maybe you can do
this on your own but maybe what you discover in this talk is that you
need to find a specialist to understand eczema in a more integrative
or functional medicine way. We know that eczema is skyrocketing, the
levels. In 1946 it was about 5% of the population. In 1970 it was 12%.
Now, some areas of the country, it’s up to 30%. At least 31 million
Americans are affected and we spend at least $3.8 billion a year on it as
a country.
One of the first cases and the point, right when I was out of residency,
when I realized there was a whole lot more to know about eczema than
what I had learned during my medical training was this case of Johnny.
I’d been seeing him since he was a baby. He had recurrent ear infections
and eczema. And at his nine month well visit, around that nine month
well visit, mom came in and said, “Dr. Kilbane, I took dairy out of my diet
and Johnny’s eczema improved.”
And I thought, “Well, I don’t know why that is, but I’ll read about it and
figure out, and we’ll decide what we do at a year of age when normally
we would start him on dairy.” And a little bit after that, we figured out
that eggs were also a trigger for him. So we took eggs out of his diet
and her diet, and he had full resolution of the eczema at that point. So I
didn’t know it then but what I know now is that about a third of eczema
is triggered by food. And two of the big culprits being dairy and eggs.
It doesn’t always mean that those are the foods that are triggering it but
those can be two of the triggers. And many of you may already know
that or you may have already gone off of certain foods. So we’re going
to get into more detail now about what are some of the other triggers of
inflammation? The gut microbiome, how that can contribute to eczema.
And the skin microbiome. The skin microbiome is often very overlooked,
even in integrative and functional medicine is we often talk about
everything being from the gut outward. But I’m going to share with you
about the skin microbiome today.
I like to be pragmatic about how we work through the triggers of

inflammation. So I I’d like to simplify things. So we say we have five main
triggers of inflammation. And first of all, we have our genetics, and then
it’s the way that our genetics interact with our food, our environment,
we have environmental toxins, infectious diseases, and stress. And they
can all contribute equally to illness. Eczema, we do know what are more
triggers than others but all of these different areas can contribute to
that.
In terms of food, I’m going to get into more about the food in a later
part of this talk, where I’m going to share with you what I do in my clinic,
step by step. But what I have also created is a download explaining
the different ways our bodies can react to foods. So foods can trigger
inflammation. And it can be very confusing. And a lot of the patients that
I’ve seen have had food allergy testing, and because it’s negative, they
might say, “I don’t need to go off of any foods.” But we can in fact have
food sensitivities. So we can have a food sensitivity.
But we can also have something called celiac disease, which is an

autoimmune condition where your body reacts to gluten, which is the
protein that’s in barley, wheat, and rye. We can have food intolerances
but that’s more of like a lactose intolerance and a lot of people get
bloated and gassy when they eat dairy. And then you can have a
histamine intolerance, and that can definitely play a role in eczema as
well.
What I want to talk about first... or second, the second trigger is

environmental allergies and dust mites can be a big one with eczema.
All the other ones, we’ve got indoor and outdoor allergens, so cats,
dogs, cockroaches, dust mites in mold. And then we’ve got the outdoor
allergens, so we’ve got trees, grasses, weeds, and molds. And molds can
be indoors and outdoors. And then I want to make that distinguishing
factor here of an allergy versus a mold toxin.
27
So when we are looking at mold allergies or any environmental allergies,
you can have that tested through either skin prick testing or bloodwork.
I often prefer bloodwork for kids with eczema because I have had one
child, not many, but a few over the years, that when they had the skin
prick testing, they actually had an eczema flare. Many primary care
doctors and definitely allergists can do the blood work to identify what
the environmental allergy may be. So that’s one easy thing that you can
do to help decrease the inflammation.
And then mold from a water damaged building, that’s an entirely

separate entity and that’s where they’re secreting toxins. So that’s where
you want to look around your home. Have you had any appliances
that have leaked? Do you have a basement that floods? Do you have a
crawlspace that might have mold? Your HVAC or your vents, do those
have mold? So if you have someone in your family and you’ve done a ton
of things to resolve the eczema, and you just can’t figure it out, start to
really look to see if you might have mold somewhere in your home or in
your environment that you’re getting exposed to.
And then when it comes to stress, I’m going to refer to that here as the
itching that we get with eczema. If we have underlying anxiety or we’re
more on the nervous side that can definitely make an eczema flare up
worse. But once we start to get the symptoms calmed down, that’s what
helps to calm the nervous system down.
[10:00]
And the itch with eczema actually travels, itch is the mildest form of pain.
So it travels on those same receptor sites. And if we can start to control
the itch with eczema that actually helps to calm the nervous system
down.
And anti-histamine medications, even though we try to do things as

naturally as possible, sometimes an anti-histamine at the beginning can
be really helpful to help address that nervous system calming. And if
we can help get into a deep restorative sleep, that’s also going to help
improve the eczema. A lot of families come to see me because they don’t
want to do medications but in this case, it can be really helpful at the
beginning. And with the Sternagels, that was one of the things, Teddy
and Ryan really didn’t want to do medications.
I said to them, “I’m pretty sure I can help Rocky, but I don’t think you’re
going to love what I have to say.” And we did use some prescription
medications and an anti-histamine, just an over the counter anti-
histamine, was one of the first things that we introduced. So, that’s
taking a step by step approach through those five triggers. Now I’m
going to get into a little bit more depth on this inflammation and illness.
So most people have heard of this concept of inflammation. And

when our cup... I always describe it as a cup of water, when our cup of
inflammation is overflowing, that’s when we have symptoms. And often
with eczema, many other illnesses go hand in hand, reflux, recurrent ear
or sinus infections, chronic runny nose, asthma, constipation, or loose
stools. So as we’re decreasing this overall inflammation, often those
other symptoms improve.
And when it comes to decreasing inflammation, the pharmaceutical

industry knows this well, steroids, topical steroids are the first and the
primary tool that we have in conventional medicine to help eczema.
Sometimes we’ll use oral steroids, we’ll use injectables for other things,
or IV, if the kids are in the hospital. We’ll inhale steroids, we’ll squirt them
in our nose. And NSAIDS, ibuprofen is an NSAID, so a non-steroidal, anti-
inflammatory medication.
What we’re going to do today and what we do with integrative medicine

is we start to decrease inflammation from the inside out. We use
medications and that’s what I love about integrative medicine is we don’t
throw the baby out with the bathwater. We use our good conventional
medical tools when needed and we combine that with integrative
medicine. So when you take that overall picture and you start to
understand this concept that inflammation is what creates a leaky gut,
most of you have heard that term, leaky gut, and that’s what leads to
illnesses.
And with this graphic, I just want you to get this illustration of that cup
of inflammation that’s overflowing can contribute to a lot of these other
illnesses as well. When our nose is congested, we’re mouth breathing,
we’re not sleeping as well, we might have restless leg syndrome, so we’re
all over the bed at night, and we’re not getting that good restorative
sleep that is so important for the immune system.
Then as we go through those triggers of inflammation and decrease

them, that’s where we start to see an improvement of all the
symptoms. And it’s also with the nervous system, because we don’t have
fences in our body. When kids’ eczema flares up, they can also have
more behavioral challenges. Maybe anxiety, maybe meltdowns and I’ll
share with you about one of my cases where that was definitely the
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case, and I see that all the time.
Moving on to gut health. The gut, you all know this, we’ve got more
bacteria in our gut than we have cells in our body; it’s called the
microbiome. We have microbiomes all over our bodies and the research
is exploding in this area. We’re learning so much about this now. So
we’ve got a microbiome in the gut, we have one in our mouth, in our
nasal passages, on our skin, in our virginal canal. And think of it like
gardening, it’s not about killing the bad things, just killing the bad things.
What we have to do is we’ve got to give the fertilizer, we’ve got to give
the right foods so that we promote the growth of the good healthy
bacteria, while addressing the not so beneficial bacteria. And this is
where restoring digestion comes into huge play. And this is where I
think in my clinic, we do this a little bit differently. We have a wonderful
integrative pharmacist, Deb Allen, who works with me, and she is the
mother of 16 year old triplets.
They were premature and when they were in the NICU, they were on a
lot of medications, as well into their toddlers, and four and five. And she
really did a tremendous amount of research. Sometimes, these kids will
end up on such restrictive diets and it’s hard for parents, it’s stressful.
But what we have to do is even go a little bit below that. And we’ve
got to make sure that our bodies are breaking down the nutrients and
absorbing them, because we need fats to make up our cell walls and to
make our hormones.
And we need proteins also to make up the receptor sites on our cell
walls, to make our neurotransmitters. Our neurotransmitters in turn
are what help us to fall asleep and to stay asleep. And our serotonin
helps us feel good, it helps our GI tract move. Our dopamine helps us to
feel good, helps us to focus in school, and do our math homework. Our
melatonin is what helps us to fall asleep, our GABA helps us stay asleep.
So those are just a lot of terms but those are basically the chemical
messengers in our body that help our systems do what we need to do
on a daily basis.
And how do we know when our gut and our digestion is working? Well,
we look at our stools, of course. We want to look at poop and sit down
with whoever in your family is struggling with eczema, and really go
through this. We want a good, either a snake like or a sausage like
looking stool. That’s when we know we’re starting to make headway is
when we have one good daily, easy bowel movement that’s formed. And
when that’s the case, that’s when we know we’re breaking down our fats
and absorbing them because our fats make up our cell wall. And when
we’re talking about skin health, we need the good fats in order to have
that really good healthy skin.
Looking at the leaky gut, and this is where I like to bring things. We talk
about cell biology, high school biology, in the clinic a lot. We’re talking
about leaky gut, so let’s talk about a gut cell. If we don’t have a good
healthy gut cell, if we don’t have proper nutrients, if we don’t have a nice
fluid cell wall with the right ratio of anti-inflammatory fats, then we’re
going to have kind of a rigid cell wall where nutrients aren’t going to be
able to go in or out.
And then when we go into our small intestine, those cells are going to
be spread apart a little bit. Normally, they should have these nice tight
junctions. And if those are open a little bit, and we get inflammation,
those undigested proteins that are getting absorbed into the
bloodstream that sends a cascade of inflammation. And that’s where
we get those rosy cheeks, bumps on the cheeks, bumps on the back
of the arms, and eczema, those runny noses. And that’s also where
we start to see those neurologic shifts, whether it’s anxiety, behavior
changes, trouble sleeping. And when it comes to that, as we restore that
digestion, that’s what’s going to help us.
We have seven layers of the skin and we need adequate blood supply,
we need those good healthy cell walls to make sure we’ve got all that
healing of the skin layers. And that can take some time. And same thing
with that cellular integrity, we’ve got to restore the GI function. So you’re
going to hear me talk about when I get into more of the steps to what
we’re going to do, is I want you to do this for a good three to six months
to get that good, solid long term improvement.
And the third area that often gets overlooked is the skin microbiome.
And this was the case, Rocky was a good example where we could be
on a perfect diet with perfect supplements but if we’re not addressing
all the triggers of inflammation, we’re not going to really get that overall
improvement. And we know with people who have eczema, they’ve got a
higher bacterial count on their skin.
[20:00]
In particular, they have a staph bacteria. That staph secretes something

called a delta toxin and if we don’t address that staph, that delta toxin is
going to continue to trigger inflammation on the skin.
31
And you can see with my graphic here, it’s a two way street, from the
staph on the skin with the gut. In integrative and functional medicine,
people will always say, “Well, the gut triggers the inflammation on the
skin.” And that can be true in some cases. But there are also cases
where the staph on the skin... when the skin is not intact, there’s newer
research to show that that can actually contribute to a leaky gut. And
once we address that staph, that’s then where we start to see that magic
happen.
And again, this is going to be a much lower percent of people with

eczema that they’re going to need to go on to address the staph. And
what we use is something called the Dr. Aron Regimen that Ryan and I
are going to be talking about when we’re doing another talk during the
summit. So tune in to that one. So it’s a two way street between the gut
microbiome and the skin.
So we want to make sure that we’re addressing... if the skin isn’t starting
to improve when we’ve removed some foods and done some really good
gut work, that’s when you have to look to the skin. And those are the
times where you’re looking at that red... similar to what Rocky had, that
red, angry looking skin, it’s irritated. That’s an indicator that strep may be
playing a role on the skin.
In terms of this concept that the skin not being intact can contribute to
a leaky gut, I just want to share this case with you. So this was a case of
a teenage boy who came to see me and he’d had a terrible burn on his
skin three years prior to them coming to see me. Where he passed out
in the shower and as he was passing out, he hit the faucet and it turned
to the hot water, and he got scalded on about a third of his skin where
he had third degree burns. And so he’d made it through that and was
really doing great, had his skin grafts.
But he had developed eczema on the non-grafted skin and he was

getting recurrent MRSA boils. And that was why they came to see me.
So what we did together is we definitely used the Dr. Aron Regimen
to address the staph on his skin. And then we checked him, and he
actually had developed a lot of food allergies that he didn’t have prior
to the burn. And so we worked and did that good gut healing, we got
him on some good fats, digestive enzymes, and he had a beautiful
improvement. As you can see, just the nice coloring in the latter
picture. And so anyway, that’s just a good example of that two way street
between the gut and the skin.
Now what we’re going to do, I am now going to shift a little bit, and we’re
going to go through some of the steps. But I want to reassure you that
I’m going to just go do a cursory overview, but I have several resources
that are going to help you work through this at home. And the first
thing I want you to do is get this cup of inflammation and I want you to
estimate the percent that you think each of these different triggers of
inflammation may be contributing to your child’s health issue.
We want to get an assessment. We want to get, if we’re making a

roadmap, where is our first point? And in terms of the resources, I
have a book, I have a workbook, I have an online course. So there are
many ways for you to access this information. So with those triggers of
inflammation, now we’re going to really talk about food. And we’re going
to talk about how I do this with my practice because I also want to make
sure that we’re not missing the forest through the trees.
Because some people, they’ll start to take dairy out of the diet and
gluten, and eggs, but yet, they still might be having artificial dyes and
colors, and the kids are eating a lot of sugar. So we’re going to take
it step by step. But the first thing I want to talk about are those food
allergies and food sensitivities. Many of you have heard about the top
eight allergens. And those are the things that in the adult world, a lot of
times the practitioners will have people go off those top eight allergens
all at once.
I don’t do that in the pediatric world because it’s really stressful for
families. It’s hard and we don’t want the kids losing weight. So what we
do is we focus first on the McDaddy of foods that triggers inflammation
and that’s just dairy. So we talk about dairy and then in eggs, those can
be the two big culprits. And then gluten is also one of the bigger culprits.
And then those other ones like corn, soy, peanuts, tree nuts, and fish,
those can be triggers, but they’re a lesser amount. And then those other
three, the shellfish, the citric acid, and the sesame, those are also lower
on the totem of creating illnesses, but they can also trigger things.
I’m going to give you one case of a patient with citric acid. It was the
case of one of my partners and it was a young boy who had asthma and
eczema, pretty severe. And dairy was one of his triggers, so they went
off dairy and had an improvement, but he still had this patch on the
back of his leg. And what they figured out is citric acid was the trigger. So
they took the citric acid, which is things like grapefruits and oranges, and
lemons and things like that, and he had an improvement, but he kept
getting this flare up around his mouth.
So as part of his asthma treatment, he was on an inhaled steroid and he
33
did it as a nebulizer. Well, he was on budesonide or Pulmicort, it’s the
same thing. And mom pulled out the packing slip from the pharmacy,
and she figured out that there was citric acid in it. So they switched him
from that and they just did a puffer, an inhaler, and that resolved the
eczema. So really getting clear on the triggers, whenever possible, is
going to help lead you to figuring out how we’re going to have that long
lasting improvement.
So foods can trigger inflammation in many different ways. Food

allergies, food sensitivities, which is more so what we’re talking about
here, and then we’ve got celiac disease, food intolerances. And then
histamine intolerance, I do just want to talk about for a moment,
because histamine can be a big trigger for eczema. There are a lot of
really healthy foods that can increase our histamine levels and it can be
things like avocado and strawberries, and bananas, and seafood. Dairy,
of course, is one of those things as well, and tomato.
So I want you to go to my website and download that so you can get a

list of the histamine foods. You don’t need to pull all those histamine
foods out of the diet. But if you’ve done some of these major things,
and you are still finding the trigger, I just want you to look at that list,
because one of them will trigger. You might say, “Every time we have
spaghetti, Johnny’s eczema flares up.” So you’ll just pay attention to
those. And it doesn’t mean they’ve necessarily have an allergy to those
foods, it just might mean that it’s triggering a histamine response.
So the first step that I do in my program, so what we do is we first do a

mini cleanse, and I say a mini cleanse for kids, but it’s very applicable to
adults. So we do a mini cleanse for kids and then we’ll talk about dairy,
and then we talk about gluten. But we will also talk about supplements.
So with the mini cleanse is you can take a day and change each of these
or you can take a week, or you can take a month.
But we want to decrease those sugary drinks, decrease those artificial

dyes and colors, decrease the packaged snacks and foods, decrease that
refined sugar, decrease those processed meats, and then decrease the
fats. So the deli meats are one thing too, because I think we often think,
“Ah, this is a good thing, my child is eating meat,” but you want to be
really careful of those. So as you increase the good healthy foods, that
is where we’re feeding the healthy bacteria in the microbiome. And we
want that really nice, good diverse microbiome. And that’s what is going
to give us those overall long lasting improvements.
Then the second thing, if that doesn’t resolve the issue, then we go on
and we remove dairy while we add in the supplements. And I do this
slowly with kids because they can get a withdrawal type effect if we
stop dairy and or gluten too quickly. So I do the dairy over a three week
period of time and then if symptoms are persisting, then we move on to
gluten. So we take the first week and we pull dairy out of breakfast while
we’re adding a probiotic. And you want to start the probiotic with the
start of breakfast and at the start of dinner because that’s going to help
us decrease that inflammatory impact that we get from food.
[30:00]
The second week, we’re going to take dairy out of lunch and we’re
going to add a digestive enzyme, along with the probiotic at the start of
breakfast and at the start of dinner. The third week, we’re going to take
dairy out of dinner and snacks, while we add in an omega three fat. It
could be in the form of fish oil, it could be in the form of foods high in
omega three fats. And then the fourth week, you’re going to keep dairy
out, and you’re going to do just dairy for the following three weeks.
And then you’re going to add in vitamin D, and either a whole food
supplement or a multivitamin mineral.
You can see what I’ve got at the bottom there. We want to make sure
that you’re monitoring symptoms as you add in each thing. And I do this
very slowly and deliberately because you can have reactions, good or
bad, with supplements. We want to make one change at a time so that
when we see improvements, either good or bad, we know what your
child has reacted to. And then here’s the supplement start guide. This
is also just for reference so that it’s easy for you to think through and to
work through this.
And then we’re going to move on to gluten. So you’ll continue the

supplements and only if the symptoms are still persisting, if the eczema
is still there, you can move on to removing gluten. Or if you suspect eggs
are the issue, you can remove eggs, and you can remove the other foods
much more quickly than you can the gluten and dairy; you can just stop
them altogether. But I don’t like you to continue removing foods beyond
dairy and gluten, and eggs unless you’re working with a practitioner,
because we need the nutrients in kids and in adults.
And over the years, I’ve seen a lot of kids come in with nutrient
deficiencies because we’ve taken so many foods out of their diets. So
please work with a practitioner if you’re getting to that stage. And what
I’d like you to do is you want to keep up, once you figure out where the
magic is with your child and what the triggers are, we’ve got to keep up
35
the supplements and the good nutrition for at least three to six months.
So think about how long it takes to heal a sprained ankle, right? When
you sprain an ankle, it takes a good three to six months until it feels like
your joint again. It’s the same thing with the gut and similar to the skin,
it takes a while to get that full thickness healing and to really get the gut
so that we have those nice tight junctions again. And with probiotics,
we have so many good benefits with probiotics, they decrease
inflammation, they support digestion, they support the immune system,
they’re going to support good bowel movements.
This is a patient, I showed you this picture earlier, and this little boy
was an 18 month old. He was already off of several foods that were
triggering him but he was still having this eczema. So the only difference
between this before and after picture was the addition of a probiotic. So
that’s how powerful restoring digestive function can be. And we had to
do more things with him but he also had such a profound improvement.
This little kiddo had severe, severe meltdowns, all day, every day; that
this family had never been able to go out to a restaurant since he’d been
born and it was affecting the whole family and his siblings. And when
we finished and decreased his overall systemic inflammation, like at one
of our last visits, he had been able to go out to a restaurant for the first
time. So that was huge and I love that.
When it comes to digestion, whether in kids or adults, there are many

factors that decrease our body’s digestive enzymes and our ability to
break down food and absorb it. You can see all these. It’s stress, it can be
our genetics; it can be aging, lack of physical activity, poor quality sleep,
prescription medications. So many people are on antacid medications,
and that can be really harmful on digestion. Recurrent illnesses,
inflammation, and leaky gut, poor quality food. Chewing too quickly, we
have all of these things that can impact our digestion.
So we want to use a good, high quality, plant based digestive enzyme

and I say plant based because that is not going to disrupt our normal
secretion of digestive enzymes from the pancreas. If we’re using animal
based pancreatic enzymes that can suppress our body’s ability to
secrete enzymes. So get a good plant based enzyme and that is going
to help our protein absorption, decrease our inflammation, our fat
absorption. It’s going to enhance bowel movements.
We talk about this in our clinic, if we just could do one supplement, and
we had to only pick one, it would probably be a digestive enzyme. So
that your body would be absorbing the good, healthy, expensive organic
food that you’re buying. And this is where we get back to the happy face,
the happy bowel movements, is when we restore digestive function.
Then we’re giving our body the natural resources to have our healthy
cells.
This is another picture from one of the patients in my practice. We had

to look at his gut microbiome, his skin microbiome, what his triggers
were. And he also had some environmental allergies, they actually had
some toxic mold in their home. So we had to really go through all the
pieces of the puzzle. But when he came to see us, he was embarrassed
to wear shorts to school because he didn’t like the way his legs looked.
And he was coming in full, wearing shorts and everything. And that’s
what I want for you and anyone in your family who has eczema.
And it’s always about this cumulative inflammation roadmap. So

because eczema can be a lifelong challenge for some people, if there is
a trigger that is continuing to be the trigger, that may always be one of
the triggers and you may have to avoid it. For example, if dairy is one of
the triggers, you may have times where you’re at a party or its holiday
season, and you want to have some dairy. So you know that we might
start to fall off the wagon for a little while and we’re getting exposed to
these triggers.
All you do when things start to get worse is you just say, “Okay, we’re
going to get back on the supplements, we’re going to get back to eating
better. And we’re going to do it again for another...” maybe you only
have to do it for a month this time to get the symptoms under control.
And then, you know knowledge is power and when you know what’s
triggering the symptoms, you have a lot more tools in your toolbox to
decrease the symptoms.
And that has been the case with Rocky. And you can see some of the
issues that he has on his body, and you can see this beautiful picture of
him in his diaper with that beautiful clear skin. And his mother will text
me and say, “Oh my gosh, I was dreading the warmer weather because
I knew we weren’t going to be able to put him in shorts and a T shirt,”
but he’s clearly able to do that now. And again, we’ll talk more in depth
about the more severe eczema in the other talk that I do with Ryan, on a
deeper dive into eczema.
But in summary, when we’re talking through eczema, we really want

to comb through those triggers of inflammation. We absolutely want
to address the gut microbiome. But we also want to make sure we’re
37
addressing the skin microbiome. It has been an absolute pleasure to
be with you here today and I hope you’ve got some good takeaways
that you can start to implement. And you can check out our resources,
we’ve got my book, a workbook, an online course, whatever is going to
help you uncover the triggers of inflammation for your family’s eczema;
that will make me very happy to help support you with some of these
resources. Thank you so much.
9 MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT
ROSACEA
Guest: Caroline Frenette
Caroline: It’s really an honor to be here today with you to share my

journey to glow, which is healing rosacea. Yes, I am still and currently
on my journey and I’m learning so much. And I thought I would share
with you some of the key points that I’ve learned and the format that I’ve
chosen was to explore misconceptions we have about rosacea that can
turn into traps really and that can keep us stuck. I will share my screen
but before we begin, I just want to tell you a little bit about myself.
So I was diagnosed with rosacea probably over 20 years ago. And I’ve
had a similar experience of many women, maybe even men, to go to
the dermatologist and to not feel heard or listened to. And to be given
a diagnosis that was so-called incurable. And after five minutes to be
given a prescription for antibiotics. I think I threw it in the garbage in
a moment of anger. I stormed out of the doctor’s office and I put my
rosacea under the carpet because it was never bad enough for me that I
couldn’t cover it.
It was never such a big issue that it caused me to feel bad about myself,
even though I didn’t always like what I saw in the mirror. And then
just fast forward to about three years ago, I was doing a Creating the
Impossible challenge with my coach. And for many years had chosen
that this challenge would be about my business, which is coaching. And
that year I heard really clearly inside of me, no, that’s boring. Let’s not do
any business stuff. Let’s do something truly impossible.
And just side note, the exploration of this program was not that it’s
impossible, it’s actually how can we shift our thinking to create what
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looks like the impossible. And this is relevant to our conversation that
we’re going to have today. And so I got the idea, okay, I’m going to
make it my project to heal rosacea within three months. And it looked
impossible to me at that time because I knew nothing about it. I knew
what you usually hear about rosacea, do you have type 1, type 2, type
3 and so on and so forth and the triggers. And I knew that we could dig
deeper.
So I listened to my intuition and fast forward to now, it has led me to
build a free educational platform called Journey to Glow. I decided to
share not only everything that I was learning about holistic and natural
solutions, not just for rosacea but also acne and psoriasis and eczema.
And I also decided to interview some of the best skin healing experts
around the world in the field of functional medicine, naturopathic
medicine, Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, holistic nutrition. The
focus and the key was that it was natural and holistic solution.
I was always very clear and I always knew deep down that there was a
solution to healing rosacea. I never believed that it was incurable. I knew
that if I could dig deep enough and put the pieces of the puzzle together,
that I could figure it out with expert help and also by educating myself
and empowering myself to make the lifestyle changes and inner shifts.
So many things that I explored and I share with you on this platform, but
I’m going to also share with you today. So I’m very grateful to be here.
My hope in this conversation is really to give you hope and to give you
some tools. And most importantly, for you to feel really empowered
and to maybe even open the doorway to what I call awakening the
inner healer, which we’re going to talk about today. So let’s get started.
I’m going to share my screen. So I’m calling this presentation, The Nine
Misconceptions/Traps to Avoid on Your Journey to Glow, because you
too are on your journey to glow. And this is me, Caroline Frenette. I am a
skin herbalist and the founder Journey to Glow.
And I didn’t write it there, but my coaching website is carolinefrenette.
com although I’m not coaching right now. So I already told you a little bit
about myself. Last thing I want to say here is that my mission is really to
change the narrative about skin particularly when it comes to rosacea. I
feel that the main narrative right now is dominated by big pharma and I
have an issue with that. We’re going to talk about this a little later on.
There’s a shift I’m going to invite you to make in your thinking that
will empower you to really see your journey to glow very differently
and your rosacea very differently. So my mission really is anchored
in empowerment and changing the narrative about skin healing and
to invite you into a space of possibility. I hope that that will be your
takeaway. Is that, once you have the map and milestones that you can
explore, that’s a better way to say it, it’s just going to be a question of
exploring and finding your own solutions. Let’s continue.
The Nine Misconceptions really is an invitation to shift your thinking and
strategy to create momentum on your journey to glow. Misconception
number one, rosacea is incurable. I’m going to be bold. I’m not here to
share the main narrative that I find so frustrating. It is not only my belief,
but I have also gathered so much evidence and you can see the before
and after photos on journeytoglow.com.
All of the women that I have interviewed that I have met in person and
online, that I have worked with either as a collaboration for a program
or a collaboration for something we’re offering for Journey to Glow, and
the proof is in the pudding. You can absolutely heal your skin and notice
that I’m really choosing my words. I don’t use the word cure and I’m
going to tell you more about that.
So unfortunately, the allopathic dermatological approach is really
outside in. It’s based on a belief that if big pharma was to create a pill
or a cream to cure you, then there would be a cure. But big pharma has
not created that magical pill, and therefore the main narrative is that
rosacea is incurable. So here’s a shift that I want us all to make. If we
shift into a functional, naturopathic approach, which is as you probably
know by now, a getting to the root cause approach, then rosacea is very
much healable.
And that’s again to me, and it might be a play on words, but it’s how I
really anchored myself in the possibility to really heal. I am not looking
for a pill outside of myself to miraculously fix me. I am not handing my
power over to doctors or to big pharma. I am taking the power into
my own hands, I want to surround myself with experts. And I want to
learn when I need to learn and I want to do what I need to do in order
to step into a place where my skin can be fully healed and that’s a
really big shift. I hope this makes sense. I think it does. I think that it’s
an empowering shift that we can all make and it opens up the path to
actually find solutions and dig to the root cause.
Misconception number two, rosacea is a skin disease. Rosacea is not
a skin disease. What is manifesting on your skin as rosacea is the
combination of several factors out of balance in the body. Now I know
that for language sake, sometimes it’s easier to say that it’s a skin issue
or a skin condition or a skin disease. I don’t like these terms because
I feel they’re defining. They’re keeping us track. I really believe in
language. I’m a coach and so I believe in shifting our language around
rosacea. I feel that it’s going to hold a lot of gifts to be able to shift how
we talk about our skin.
[10:00]
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In fact, I even stopped saying that it’s my rosacea. I’m trying not to say,
your rosacea. And I did this exercise, it’s this super fun exercise with
participants of the program where I invited them to find a name for their
rosacea. And it was a really playful exploration that brought so many
gifts. I’m actually going to be gifting you this exploration, it’s going to be
linked to at the end of the presentation. If you want to do it, you might
get some really interesting, intuitive messages of what your skin has to
share with you.
And I feel this is a way that we can start a new relationship with our skin.
We can start a new dialogue. So it starts with breaking the language
and the narrative that’s keeping us stuck. And it’s back to that inside out
approach. Trying to heal rosacea with a belief that it’s a skin issue as if
it’s a rash or you rubbed your face in poison ivy and therefore let me put
something on my skin, is misleading. Because you’re going to look for
solutions to fix your skin from the outside. Let me fix that redness or the
breakouts when really we need to do to dig deeper.
So the real work really lies in finding the root cause, which is very
exciting. So here are a few things. This is part of the rosacea “map” that I
want you to take away. By the way these slides are going to be available
for you, so you can feel free to write notes if you want to, but you can
just grab my notes. Again, the link will be at the end of this presentation,
but to heal rosacea you’ll need to look at diet first and foremost.
And I have to highlight this because the main narrative right now, not in
functional medicine and not in naturopathic medicine of course, but in
traditional medicine, allopathic medicine and dermatology is that diet
does not affect your skin. And that’s absolutely insane that this narrative
is still going on. We’re going to dive into this a little later, but you can
do a simple elimination diet and see drastic diminishing of the redness
of your skin within 30 days by eliminating inflammatory foods. So diet
totally and absolutely number one on the list.
To heal rosacea, you’re going to need to look at possible food
sensitivities, gut issues, SIBO, pathogens, parasites, liver function, liver
burdens such as heavy metals. And I’m including here heavy metals
in the forms of amalgam. Just a little side note here, but I knew I had
a feeling after reading not only the Medical Medium but also Nadine
Artemis, her book on holistic dentistry and then doing some research
from a functional approach to dentistry. I had four old amalgams in my
mouth that were literally 30 years old. And amalgams will leak.
And there you have another source of heavy metals that’s burdening
your liver. If you have heavy metals that’s burdening your liver, you
have some pathogens and viruses that are going to feed on those heavy
metals and that can create dermatoxins. So just wanted to share that
with you. I do have a video on YouTube where I share more of that
whole story and how I sucked it up and I paid the money. And I booked
like three appointments back to back. I chose to work with a holistic
dentist that I found in town. I prepared myself ahead of time with my
naturopathic doctor and then I just did it.
I removed those suckers out of my mouth. And first of all, it looks so
much better, but I have to say that the redness of my rosacea decreased
significantly the following week of removing all my amalgams. So just
wanted to share that. Don’t be scared. Do it if you need to do it. Put it
on your list, but it might be something that you want to look at. Let’s
continue. You’re also going to look at environmental factors such as
toxins, pollutants, mold in your home, car, maybe your workplace, toxic
chemicals in your skincare, cleaning products, and of course lifestyle,
stress.
You might want to look at the emotional root cause which is not talked
about very much and I want to remedy that. I want to create that
exploration because I feel that it holds a lot of richness. And you might
also want to explore your inner dialogue. And let’s just take a little pause
here and talk about your inner dialogue. And we’re going to talk about
it more towards the end of the presentation, but I just want to ask you a
question right now. What is it when you look in the mirror and you look
at yourself and you have no makeup on and have you ever noticed your
inner dialogue and how you talk to yourself?
If I could give you one homework after this presentation, it would be for
you to explore and be discerning of your inner dialogue. Because most
of the time we’re not really aware of the mind chatter and how it plays
a role on our journey to glow. It can keep us stuck, it can make us quit
or abandon, it can definitely sabotage our progress. So I’d like to invite
you to look at your dominant chatter and to see, would you talk this way
to your best girlfriend? To your lover? Are you kind to yourself? Are you
beating yourself up?
Because this definitely has an impact on your physical body, your
energetic body, your emotional body and your spiritual body. So just a
quick invitation for you here and we’re going to talk about it a little later
in the presentation. Misconception number three is diet alone will not
fix your rosacea. Changing your diet to an anti-inflammatory diet or
removing corporate foods can have a huge impact on your skin. But it’s
more likely that you’ll have to dig a little deeper to find the root cause.
Now, the reason why I’m sharing this misconception is because I hear
from the Journey to Glow community so often that they quit gluten for
two weeks, but their skin hasn’t healed or they stopped dairy for one
week. And then the question is, how long am I going to have to deal with
43
this? How long am I going to have to quit dairy? Or how long do I have
to quit the wine? It is not going to be just one thing in your diet, and it’s
not going to be diet alone. You have to look at the different pieces of the
puzzles.
And this is really crucial because if you think that diet alone is going to
fix your rosacea then again, you need to look at the different pieces
of the puzzle. Otherwise you won’t be able to see the bigger picture
of what’s really happening within your body. Again, because we’re not
just looking at the surface of the skin. We’re looking at different pieces,
maybe gut, maybe liver, maybe heavy metals again. Maybe there’s an
immune disorder in there, maybe there’s Demodex mites, which I don’t
talk about in this presentation, but that’s very interesting.
And to have a bigger picture is going to enable you to create a solid
action plan. Again, things to look at diet, food, sensitivities, gut issues,
liver function, environmental factors, toxic chemicals, the emotional root
cause, your inner dialogue. These are, not all of them, some of the key
things you want to look at for rosacea. I don’t really include skincare per
se in there, although working with a holistic facialist or corneal therapist
can be really helpful because you might make things worse while you’re
healing your skin.
So of course, the right skincare is not going to heal rosacea, it might
calm your skin. You still have to look and dig deep and put these pieces
of the puzzle together. Misconception number four. And I hear this a lot
and to be honest that was me at the beginning of my journey to glow. I
just wanted to find the one thing that would heal my rosacea. So I would
hear about a new supplement, I would say, “Oh, NSM, that’s going to
work.” Or, “Oh, vitamin C,” or “Oh, greens powder,” or “Oh probiotics,” or
oh, that $250 serum that everyone was having miraculous results with
except me.
[20:00]
Looking for the one thing is such a trap because there’s not just one
thing. There’s not just one supplement and not just one miracle, cream
or serum. Maybe not even just one practitioner that can help you. You
might need to build your health team. I know I have different people
that I work with that are good at different things and it’s okay. It’s okay
to get different kinds of support. There’s not just one miracle herbal
remedy and there’s not one perfect diet. It really is a process on your
journey to glow.
And this is crucial again. That to fully heal your skin, you’re going to have
to become a detective and empower yourself to take the healing process
into your own hands. Let’s start this video again. Look at this beautiful
image and breathe really deeply. And I want you to imagine that you’re
coming back into your body and you’re bringing your power back to you.
And that you’re grounded in your body. You’re grounded in your inner
healer.
You’re grounded in possibility and you’re taking the healing process
into your own hands. That means that you’re feeling empowered, but
as you’re breathing here right now, you might feel something else. You
might feel anchored in self-love. You might feel anchored in patience
or kindness towards yourself. So whenever you feel that you’re chasing
the next thing that you’re hoping for a quick fix. Oh, vitamin D. You read
something about vitamin D. Oh, might be SIBO. Yes, it might be, totally.
And stay grounded. Really stay grounded.
Otherwise what tends to happen, and I’ve seen that a lot, is that people
quit too soon because they don’t see the results that they thought
this thing was going to bring. And if you quit, you’re not going to see
the results. Trap number four is trying all of the things, AKA, throwing
spaghetti at the wall hoping something will stick. I’ve done that too. And
I’m still not a minimalist in my approach. I’m very much a maximalist.
You should see all of the supplements and plant medicine around here.
And if we’re not strategic on our journey to glow, then we’re not going
to know what’s working. We might do different things that are canceling
each other. And honestly, I heard this from someone last week who was
explaining the focus of ayurveda which is about removing more than
adding. And I thought, yeah, that’s what it is for rosacea as well. It’s not
about adding, adding, adding, maybe it’s about removing, making things
more simple, eliminating. So eliminating toxic foods, too many skincare
products, eliminating bad habits, eliminating toxic thoughts, toxic
relationships, limiting beliefs.
So another homework if you’re up for it, but feel free to grab a piece
of paper, you can press pause if you want and maybe your journal
and stream of consciousness writing. Just jot down what you need to
eliminate. So you’re tuning into your inner wisdom, your inner healer,
and you just write down what you feel you need to eliminate. Tip is to
keep a food journal and write down how certain foods and supplements
make you feel and track your setbacks or progress.
You can also track your mood, you can also track your cycle. In one
of our rosacea programs, we had participants create cheat sheets or
tracking sheets that they tracked all of the above plus their cycles and
they really started to notice changes in their skin during the month. And
also how certain foods triggered their skin. And we’re going to talk about
triggers a little later on, but this is especially helpful for an elimination
diet. And this is not intuitive to me. I hate tracking.
I don’t have time for this and it just needs to be done because you
45
can gather so much evidence and so many clues that can help you
make better choices in the long-term. For example, I just finished a
SIBO protocol because I tested positive and there’s a huge co-relation
between SIBO and rosacea by the way. There’s lots of really interesting
research on the topic if you want to look for it. And some other research
shows that when people healed their SIBO, rosacea went away for
something like 80% of the participants of this study. So I had to get
the food journal out and get yourself something pretty if it’s going to
motivate you.
Do what you need to do. Turns out I can’t have any of that pea protein.
Strawberries are high histamine and histamine was an issue for me. And
I learned so much now that I’m not in the SIBO protocol anymore. And
I’m not on a super strict diet because a SIBO diet can be really strict. I
know how to eat to sustain my body, to have the maximum nutrition
and to also make sure that my skin doesn’t break out because I’ve had
too much dairy for example. So that’s my tip. How do you like that guy? I
just had to put that photo there.
Trap number five, I’ve tried everything and nothing’s worked. The
reason why I’m putting this here is because I’m hearing so much of this
from the Journey to Glow community. And I know that this can be two
things. One, it can be a mindset trap. That you’re just sick of it. And you
want to see success and result already. And your mind is like, “I tried
everything.” The truth is that if you still have your rosacea, you haven’t
tried everything. There’s more to try. But I’m also aware that when I say
that, it can feel overwhelming.
And also we can go down a rabbit hole of spending a lot of money on
functional testing, which are amazing. Functional tests are amazing. And
I’m listing some of them here. Just back again to, I’ve tried everything
and nothing’s worked. I want you to shift this if that ever comes up in
your state of mind. I want you to shift it and ask better questions. You
might want to ask, I wonder if this would work? Or I wonder what I
haven’t tried? Or what else do I need to see? This shift is crucial because
it will bring you into an open state of mind where possibility and new
ideas can come.
A negative state of mind or a stuck state of mind, which is, I’ve tried
everything, nothing’s worked. That’s a state of mind that’s stuck. Nothing
really good can come out of this kind of state of mind. Actually, you’re
probably going to quit and give up and say, “I spend too much money
already, and this is not working.” None of that stuff is going to be helpful.
So this is where you get back into alignment with your inner healer. You
ground yourself into calm, you breathe. Maybe you take a little walk and
then you just shift your mind towards new possibilities by asking better
questions.
I put a photo of this guy here because he’s fabulous, but also because
he’s like a little detective. He’s doing research and he’s looking for the
solution. And he’s serious, yes. But I have a feeling that he’s focused and
he’s going to find what he’s looking for. Checklist again, is to adopt an
anti-inflammatory diet, ditching the sugar, gluten, dairy, soy, processed
food, limit alcohol and coffee, see what works for you.
I stopped drinking alcohol for 365 days. I did a 365 days no alcohol
challenge in 2019, it did nothing for my rosacea. It did everything for
my sleep and my hormones, but nothing for my rosacea because I
didn’t take care of the SIBO, I didn’t take care of the histamine and so
there you go. But it was an exploration I needed to do. It might be what
moves the needle for you. So I’m dropping it here. It’s up to you to
explore. And I’m also adding to the checklist the tests you might want
to explore with a functional practitioner. It could be a functional doctor,
naturopathic doctor or a functional diagnostics nutrition practitioner.
Food sensitivities.
[30:00]
There’s one of them called the Mediator Release Test. We have an
interview with an expert with this test. It’s not something we hear a
lot about. It’s very specific. It’s a blood test. You might want to do an
elimination diet. Histamine intolerance is something to definitely look at
when you have rosacea. Gut issues again, SIBO test or GI-Map test. You
can also test for heavy metal toxicity, which I did.
I forgot to drop that in here, but you might want to test your water.
I had to do that right off the bat with my naturopathic practitioner. I
have well water here, I thought it was really good water, but we did find
some heavy metals in there that she didn’t want to see. So now I have
a Santevia filter. So having a filter for your water is key. Definitely not
drinking city water with fluoride and just pharmaceuticals and crap.
You want to definitely have a good filter. So that’s a good investment to
make.
You might want to check your hormones via the DUTCH Test. That’s a
very interesting test, I’ve also done that one. Although for me personally,
it didn’t point to anything directly related to rosacea. Replacing toxic
products. We’ve already talked about this, but I’m dropping it on the list.
Lifestyle changes, emotional root cause, and then again, just reminding
you of key things, so feel free to download this. Here’s our little guy
again. Keep investigating, don’t give up. Put your detective hat on or
put your glasses on. And remember that progress might be happening
under the surface of your skin and you’re not seeing it so don’t quit. You
might need to just allow yourself some time.
Trap number six is focusing on the triggers and not going to the root
47
cause. This was my biggest frustration when I started Journey to Glow.
I started doing research and everything that was coming out on Google
was the triggers, the triggers, the triggers. And I was like, that’s so
freaking annoying because I know that just managing the triggers is not
going to heal my skin. And I got frustrated at the poor quality of articles
on Google, specifically the ones ranking in the top 10 and just recycling
the same old information. So I wanted to drop this here because it’s
annoying.
Focusing on the triggers alone is not going to heal your skin. This is
a managing symptoms approach. And it’s what most people believe.
They believe that they need to manage the symptoms. And I really
want to invite you to dig deeper. Still, I’m just going to list it here. And
I’m going to challenge this common triggers, saunas, hot baths, spicy
foods, exercise, alcohol coffee, extreme hot and cold weather, direct
midday sun exposure, harsh chemicals, stress, anger. Now I want you to
consider the benefits of safe sun exposure for vitamin D.
I don’t know about you but it’s just not realistic for me. Someone who
loves stand up paddle boarding and being outside and gardening and
just being outside in the summer, a short Quebec summer that I am
going to be outside. Safe sun exposure is good for vitamin D. So maybe
get a big hat, sunscreen if you want, clean, non-toxic of course. Then
there’s the question of saunas. I have a sauna downstairs and honestly
it makes no sense to me to not use a sauna when it’s -30 Celsius in
Quebec in the winter. And saunas are great to support detoxification of
the body.
Same for a really nice Epsom salt bath. And same for the benefits that
both the saunas and baths have on the relaxation of the body. So my
point here is not to go out in the sun at noon and stare at it and burn
your skin, obviously not. It’s just to consider what works for you. And
maybe you want to the question the generic advice out there that is
just somewhat helpful and see what works. For me personally, taking a
sauna even if my skin is going to be temporarily red, I don’t care.
I’m going to go to sleep. I’m going to sleep so much better. I’m going to
wake up completely refreshed, stress completely out of my body. So that
benefit outweighs the redness on my skin. So just food for thought here.
Trap number seven, going about your healing journey as if it’s a
marathon or a sprint. And I’m saying both. I’m saying a sprint or a
marathon. I don’t want to do a sprint nor a marathon. That sounds
exhausting to me. So my invitation to you is to really check to see what
kind of energetics you’re bringing to your journey to glow. Are you
wanting to get things done really quickly? And again, you’re doing all
of the things. Are you in for the long haul but oh my God, it’s a little
discouraging, I’m going to be eating that way for two years.
And have you lost the fun? Have you lost the pleasure? I believe, and this
is something you can question for yourself, but I believe that our journey
to glow can be empowering and nurturing and joyful. And our body
responds to joy. It responds to being in harmony with life. It responds
to being alive and loving ourselves. And your skin is definitely listening
to your inner dialogue again, but just your life strategies and how you’re
going about it on your journey to glow.
So I have another homework for you if you’re up for it. Feel free to
rescript who you want to be and what you want to see and what you
want your journey to glow to be. What qualities do you want to embody?
How do you want to feel? And really anchor yourself into that.
Trap number eight is focusing only on the physical, which is the
dominant narrative I feel. Not so much in holistic medicine, but in
general people get a little stuck on just looking at gut and liver and skin
and a more holistic mind, body, spirit approach is necessary. Everyone
that I have interviewed that has had full and complete healing of their
rosacea have had some kind of inner shift. Some of them I’m going to
drop the name of Georgie Holbrook here. I had an interview with her.
She had a huge emotional awakening and she had rosacea. Her rosacea
was so bad that she was almost disfigured. And she had an insight in a
public bathroom where she realized so much about her life. I’m going to
invite you to watch the video and to listen to the podcast to know more,
but she had such a huge insight that it shifted her energy, it shifted her
emotions and her traumas and her skin started to get better from that
moment. And I’ve met Georgie, I’ve seen the before and after photos.
For her, she tried everything physical, diets, and I forget if it’s
homeopathy or naturopathy, but it was years and years ago. It wasn’t
as popular than naturopathic doctors, but she tried a lot, the juicing and
the fasting and nothing worked. And she had an emotional insight and
that was the healing trigger for her. So I wanted to share this because
that’s just absolutely amazing. It shows the power of the mind, body,
spirit connection. And it brings us back to that invitation to really tune
into the inner healer to honor the innate wisdom of our bodies and
ourselves.
And just to reiterate here that getting to the emotional, energetic or
spiritual root cause maybe the missing link for you as it is for many of
us on our journey to glow. Tools you might want to consider, flower
essences work on an energetic level. I’ve been working with flower
essences for about 10 years. And I have to say that they can open the
energetic doorway for healing to be received.
[40:00]
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So something else, again, if you’re someone who has tried everything,
but you have not opened the energetic doorway to receive healing,
flower essences may very well be your allies.
Herbal medicine is amazing. Tuning into the soul of the plants, whether
it’s in the form of essential oils or herbal medicine, that’s very powerful.
Somatic and trauma healing. Pranayama of course is very powerful,
transformative coaching, shamanic healing, and emotional healing.
And the last one, trap number nine is not listening to your own inner
guidance and constantly asking for advice, looking outside of yourself
for the answer and not listening to what your body wants, not listening
to what your soul is yearning for or what your heart needs.
So the inner healer, this is my work as a coach, really invites you to stay
anchored in possibility which is crucial when things don’t go our way.
And I see the inner healer as the doorway to healing, to self-love, self-
compassion, inner calm and being in that space as much as we can has
an impact on the parasympathetic system. And we know that healing
happens in that space of calm. So something to explore.
We are wrapping up our presentation. So thank you so much for tuning
in. I hope this was helpful. I would love for you to come and hang out
with me on social media or reach out by email if you have any questions,
I’d love to hear if you have any takeaways. And I just want to leave you
with a message of empowerment and trusting in your heart that you can
heal your skin and that you have everything you need within yourself,
but also you are surrounded with allies that can support you on your
journey to glow. So don’t give up, there is help and there is certainly a
community here for you.
ENVIRONMENTAL TOXINS AND
TRIGGERS
Ryan: Hello again, and very glad to have you back with us for day
two, Environmental Toxins and Triggers. Environmental toxicants, we
are certainly no stranger to. When our son Ryder was first diagnosed
with stage four cancer at a year old, we took a look around at all the
other kids getting diagnosed with cancer and the adult cancer rates
skyrocketing over the past 100 years.
And it became pretty obvious that something was causing it. And there
are other components, of course, emotional stress being a big one. But
the really big thing we noticed was the world just keeps becoming a
more toxic place. And we started to see this repeated in different ways
with all the health documentaries we were watching.
If it was a movie about chemical production, there would be a graph
about cancer rates compared to a graph of chemical production, and
you’d see they pretty much rose identically to each other. But then there
would be another movie about GMO foods, and they’d have the same
graphs showing the cancer rates and GMOs to be highly correlated.
Electromagnetic fields or EMF, there’s the graphs again.
And what we’ve also noticed in watching so many health productions
over the years is this is where cancer and potential autoimmune
conditions have the biggest overlap. All the same environmental
toxicants that get talked about in cancer get talked about in
autoimmune and skin conditions like eczema.
Teddy: We’re all being exposed to the same stuff. It’s just impacting us
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in different ways. It likely comes down to what we’re more predisposed
to. Three people could work at the same chemical factory together for
years, and one might get cancer, the next Crohn’s disease, and the next
high-grade eczema.
And what we’ve noticed is people absolutely do not take this seriously
enough, either for prevention or after they’ve already come down with
a chronic condition like eczema. Before someone realizes they’ve got
a case of eczema, either in themselves or in their kid, they’re probably
allowing themselves to overlook a whole lot more environmental
toxicants than they realize.
It’s just a little cleaner here, just a synthetic beauty product because I
like it so much. A little non-organic food laced with pesticides, laundry
detergent, whatever it is, it can be easy to write it off as not that much,
but the problem is it all adds up.
Ryan: Yeah. We’ve probably heard the toxic bucket analogy. Your body
can only take so much toxicity. You can compare it to a bucket. And as
long as the bucket stays at a manageable level, you’re fine. But all these
things keep filling up the bucket, and eventually, it spills over, and that
spillover is eczema.
So that’s the prevention side, but then you’ve also got the other side of
the coin. Once someone gets that condition, now they’ve got it. So what
good does something that would have been good for prevention do
because they’ve already got it? Absolute wrong way to think.
First, in general, even when you do identify the root cause and give the
body what it needs, healing takes a lot of energy from your body. If it’s
spending all its energy dealing with an onslaught of chemicals, allergens,
energetic stresses constantly, et cetera, now you’re not only asking it to
climb a mountain. You’re asking it to do it with a 100-pound backpack.
Teddy: And we took this incredibly seriously after our son Ryder was
diagnosed with cancer. So seriously, we built a non-toxic house in the
middle of the woods. And our first online event was actually called The
Toxic Home Transformation. So we’re already doing pretty well on this
front.
And more specific to eczema, your skin is incredibly sensitive right now.
And just coming into contact with a lot of these toxicants is enough to
give you that flare up and keep the never-ending cycle of inflammation
inside and outgoing.
Now, a deep dive into all things non-toxic living would be a course in and
of itself or the first event we did for that matter but giving you the basics
of what the main categories to be aware of is not hard at all. So what
we’re going to do is give you a tour around our house to show you the
basics and then circle back here to talk about eczema-specific triggers.
Ryan: All right. Let’s start with the most important room in the house for
most people, the kitchen. So what I want you to bear in mind as we go
through this tour, which by the way, isn’t going to be the most extensive
tour possible. Otherwise, it would be an entire masterclass in and of
itself on how to live in a non-toxic home filled with non-toxic stuff. But
we are going to focus on the most important things and particularly the
most important things when we’re talking about skin.
So what I want you to bear in mind as we go through this is everything
that you touch or consume and consume could be eat. It could be
breathe, could be drink. Everything you touch and consume, that’s either
going to be good for your skin, or it’s going to be irritating for your skin
or toxic for your skin like we talked about.
Some things could be theoretically non-toxic, but if you’ve got really
sensitive skin, eczema like we’ve been going through, some ordinary
things just aren’t going to cut it for living with eczema while you’re
healing, I should say because the goal here is not to live with eczema. It’s
to get over it like we’re so close to doing already ourselves.
So that being said, we try to keep that in mind. Whenever we’re buying
something new for the house that’s going to come into our home, is this
non-toxic, or could this be toxic? And if you don’t know, that’s a really
good-- again, that’s a good question to ask yourself. And if you don’t
know the answer, the Internet’s a wonderful place, and all you would
need to do is search non-toxic frying pan or toxic frying pan, either way.
See what you get.
And sure enough, frying pans could be very toxic for the love of God. I
hope we all know not to be using Teflon non-stick pans by now. Yeah,
they’ve been well-known to be very toxic for a variety of reasons for
a long time. But outside of that, when we’re talking about eczema
specifically, we talked about nickel being an irritant.
And nickel is not really a great substance for anybody, but it’s bearable
for most people to get a little nickel to be touching nickel or to be
consuming nickel, that sort of thing. But if you’ve got eczema and nickel
is a big irritant, especially in lower quality steel pan, any kind of steel
cookware is going to be higher in its nickel content. So when you’re
scraping that thing, you’re scraping off the nickel right there, not to
mention just touching it the whole deal.
So ideally, I would probably stay away from steel pans, if you can,
going through eczema entirely. This is a ceramic pan. It is non-stick,
but it’s amazing ceramic technology, I guess you could say. This brand
is Caraway. This was actually a gift to us. Another couple of really good
brands that I know of that are the same type of deal, take a look and see
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what you think might be best for you would be GreenPan and Extrema.
Extrema maybe.
So those are a couple of good options for non-toxic ceramic-based pans
that you don’t have any chance of nickel exposure on, let’s say. Speaking
of cooking on the stove, this is an electric stove, which we chose when
we were building this house. Gas cooktops they test much higher for all
the byproducts of burning that gas, benzene, that sort of thing.
I mean, it’s notable, especially if you don’t have a hood. We’ll have a
hood here someday. We just couldn’t quite swing it on construction on
the first round, but hey, a gas-powered cooktop. And especially if you
don’t have a hood, but I mean, I wouldn’t have one either way.
[10:00]
You can get pretty inexpensive little portable burner plate type of deals
that you could use if you wanted to see through this again because we
talk about that toxic load.
You’re breathing in those byproducts, that benzene, stuff like that all
the time, not to mention being a huge cancer causer. It’s not a good
idea if you’re trying to de-irritate yourself and not have all sorts of toxic
chemicals that you’re breathing in consistently.
What else? When we talk about tableware, food storage, that sort of
thing, glass is our best friend. We have all glass food storage, so our
food is not sitting in glass overnight. We have glass plates. You can get
ceramic plates. You just have to make sure that they are really good
food-safe glaze and really dig into that.
If you’re just getting your ceramic plates from a big box store, chances
are they are coming from China or somewhere that doesn’t really care
about having lead in its glaze. There’s another irritant right there for
you, lead, not to mention just being a toxic chronic disease-causing
component.
So yeah, not a good idea to have just any old ceramic plate. Like I said,
if you go on Etsy or something like that, you can get really good ceramic
plates made by people who really care about that sort of thing and
take pride in only having the safest ingredients in their glaze. They just
happen to be a lot more expensive.
So we went the glass route. And you can find some kind of cool antique,
decorative glassware type of things. And so that’s the route we’ve gone
for now. And lastly, we don’t drink out of plastic whatsoever. We do have
glass jars. We have some glass drinking jars around, but they tend to
get broken and what stays is good old Mason jars. You can use it for a
million different things. So that’s what we have here.
What else? Stainless steel blender. So it drives us crazy when we see
people making like a hot soup or doing the butter in your coffee thing in
a plastic blender because then you’re heating up that plastic and getting
that-- it’s not a good idea to heat up plastic and then drink whatever
comes out of that heated up plastic.
So stainless steel, blender. And again, I’m not saying run out and get
a stainless steel blender overnight. But what I am saying is, again, just
trying to get you to start thinking about everything you potentially bring
into the house and everything you use in the house. It’s kind of a good
exercise just next time you use your cleaner. I’ll go there.
We’ve talked about cleaners in the cleaner section that we broke out. So
I’m not going to go too extensively into it, but again, anything you pick
up going forward, anything you consider buying, could this be toxic? Is
there a non-toxic option, that sort of thing? And especially have that list
of triggers that we’re talking about handy when you’re thinking about
that stuff as well. Eczema specific triggers, rubber, nickel, et cetera, the
stuff we talked about in the other video.
So again, speaking of other videos, we did talk about cleaning. So I
won’t go into it too extensively, but again, if we’re in the disinfecting
mode, we like the SaniTru device, I guess you could call it, to make the
hypochlorous acid. And if we are in balance mode, then biome balance,
I guess you could say, that’s when we use this bottle of P2 probiotic
power. This is the concentrate that we pour into the bottle and then add
water from there.
Again, it gives a nice biome balance to the whole place. And I think
that might do it for the kitchen. Again, by no means all-encompassing,
all-inclusive, but wanted to give you a highlight of some of the big
things that we think about when it comes to a non-toxic kitchen and, in
particular, an eczema irritant-free kitchen. With that, we’ll move to the
living room.
So the main thing I wanted to talk about when it comes to the living
room is furniture both in terms of toxicity and in terms of allergens. So
when you get furniture, the default any couch, sofa, chair, that sort of
thing that you would get from any regular old furniture store or home
goods store, that is going to be toxic on a couple of fronts. It’s going to
be built with pressed wood, either particleboard, OSB type of stuff, or
plywood.
Both are pretty much little pieces of wood that have been glued
together. That glue is off-gassing formaldehyde. And in addition to being
a cancer causer, it’s just a known irritant to just about everything. And
also the foam. The foam itself that gets used for the cushions, again,
that foam really just is a bunch of chemicals that have been made into
55
this solid object.
So that’s going to be off-gassing a whole bunch of compounds you don’t
necessarily want to be breathing in at all. Yeah. And I don’t want you to
freak out that you’re probably sitting on a couch or chair that isn’t from
a non-toxic furniture manufacturer. We waited a long time to get this
Medley couch.
Medley is our favorite brand when it comes to furniture. That’s what
we furnished a lot of the new non-toxic house in. If you’re not sitting
on something that’s made from non-toxic materials. I don’t want you
to freak out, one, because the older it gets, the more it’s done its off-
gassing. So if you’re sitting on something brand new, I would really
highly consider just figuring out a way to not be doing that.
And either getting something used or figuring out a way to maybe sell
the new couch and get a new Medley couch. The chairs you see back
here we got from an estate sale. And I’m quite sure they’re not non-toxic,
but they do have a little bit of foam padding on the seat, but I flipped
it over at the sale. They were a good 15 years old. So I mean, that has
done most, if not all, of its off-gassing.
So again, yeah, it’s not going to be the highest priority thing telling you to
go out and buy a new couch. But just, again, something to be mindful of
when we think about things that are already in our home and things that
we could be considering bringing into our home. Is this thing going to be
non-toxic? Is it going to be non-irritating?
And on the irritant front, that’s something I really wanted to hammer in,
especially when it comes to having a chronic skin condition like this is
allergens are-- when we talk about dust, dust mites-- I think it’s dust mite
poo that flies around on the dust that’s the huge contributor to allergic
reactions.
Allergic reactions are the last thing you want to be dealing with when
you’re already dealing with an inflammatory type situation on your skin
already. You don’t want to be adding more inflammation when it comes
to an allergic reaction.
So like I said, vacuuming, dusting periodically is a really good idea for
obvious reasons. But we only started doing this the last few years,
vacuuming our couch. We have a little special vacuum furniture
attachment for our vacuum.
We’ve been vacuuming at least once a week, if not more, our furniture
for the past few years. And wow, every time we vacuum it, even though
it’s, like I said, at least once a week, it is amazing the amount of stuff,
mostly dust type stuff, that we get in the vacuum that has all settled
onto our chair, onto our couch, et cetera.
So good idea for everyone to vacuum their furniture. But again,
particularly if you’re going through a chronic skin condition like eczema,
keep that inflammation down. Vacuum your furniture. You will notice a
difference. And when we talk about allergens, I don’t know if it’s worth
mentioning, but we even take it to the extent of-- I think you can see our
dog Batman and his dog bed right there.
And we are thinking about getting a new dog bed for Batman because
he’d been on the same little tiny thing forever, and we felt bad for him.
That’s something we thought about was can we get a non-toxic dog
bed? The company we get our pillows from also makes—and it’s called
Silverite—also makes a dog bed, which this dog bed is filled with a
material called Kapok.
It’s naturally highly pathogen resistant. It doesn’t let a lot of stuff settle
in it outside of just the material itself. And it’s also lined with silver. So it
actually kills pathogens that might try to live there. So again, this is the
type of stuff we think about.
What else was I going to show you?
[20:00]
Oh, again, not crucial, but again, just to illustrate the point of thinking
about what you bring into your house. When we were looking for a
bookcase, this bookcase happened to be listed in our local ads. This was
a used somebody else’s bookcase—same thing as the estate sale.
We checked, and it was old, but more importantly, actually, it was not
made from that pressed wood. This is a solid wood bookcase that, for
some reason, someone decided to give away for free. We’ll never know
why, but we took advantage of it.
And the last thing I want you to keep in mind when again, you’re
probably looking around your living room right now thinking about all
the things that could be releasing toxicants, that sort of thing, we’ll talk
about what we do for air purification as far as an actual machine in a
second.
But I did want to draw your attention to-- probably you can’t see not
even a third of the plants we have in this room from this angle. And
plants, one, are just great to have around. I mean, it’s really nice to
look around and just see the life in your house wherever you look. It’s
contributing to that living energy, that life force, I guess you can say, that
your house could be filled with, but also they’re an incredible detoxifier
of air.
What do you know? NASA did a study a while back on the most
detoxifying houseplants. That’s pretty easy to find online, but they’re
all going to do a good job. So again, I don’t want you to be freaking out
57
about whether or not your house does or doesn’t have any furniture
that could be toxic. But again, one thing you can start doing right away,
vacuuming your furniture, getting rid of that allergen load.
And then also taking care of your air, which we talked about plants. So
that’s probably a good time to head upstairs to talk about air purification
and some bedroom stuff, and we’ll call it good.
So I think for this last portion of the home tour, we’re going to make it an
air purification bedroom combo. This is the kids’ room you see behind
me here. So we just got done talking downstairs about furniture and all
the various things in your home that could be off-gassing and releasing
compounds into the air that you don’t want to be breathing, particularly
when you’re trying to heal something inflammatory like eczema or a skin
condition.
Again, everything you’re taking in that’s doing something, whether it’s
something good or something negative. And when we think about
negative, we think about-- again, there’s a million reasons not to be
breathing in toxicants of all kinds off-gassed compounds, all kinds.
But when we think about a chronic skin condition that you’re trying
to get over, the last thing you want to be doing is adding more
inflammation to that fire, and what you breathe in plays a really big part
of it. So again, we just talked about furniture and stuff, but when we
were building this house specifically to be non-toxic, we learned that
most houses themselves can be off-gassing their stuff.
I mean, most are built with that pressed wood that we talked about
between the walls and the floors, et cetera. If you’re not careful and use
the wrong mudding on the drywall, I mean, even that can be something
that’s toxic and releasing things that you don’t want to be breathing. So,
I mean furniture aside, you are going to deal with some sort of toxicity in
the air that you need to be dealing with.
That’s just how it is. And we talked about plants downstairs. That’s an
amazing strategy that everyone should implement, but we go crazy on
air purification as well. We usually keep windows open just to keep a
nice airflow going. When we built this house, we built it with a whole-
home air purifier and air exchanger because we’re that big on it.
But we still, I mean, even with those things, we still have several
standalone air purification unit throughout the house on top of that.
Because again, there’s just a lot of stuff floating around in the air. You
get that sun coming through the window, and all of a sudden, you say,
oh, where did all that stuff flying around in the air come from?
It’s always flying around. You just can’t always see it. And we’re really
big on not bogging down our bodies, our immune systems. That started
with cancer when we’re talking about immune system—same thing
when it comes to a chronic skin condition, eczema in particular. There’s
an immune component there, something with the immune system.
It doesn’t have to be full-blown autoimmune, but something with the
immune system isn’t where it should be.
And so we want all of our kids’, now particularly Rocky’s, immune system
to be doing what it needs to do and not worrying about all sorts of
different stuff that he’s breathing in all the time. So again, we’re really
big on air purification. We happen to love this brand AirDoctor.
I think it’s hands down the best specs combined with the best price. You
stack its air filtration capabilities up to the super expensive ones that no
one can afford, or maybe they can afford to have one in the living room.
But what about all the bedrooms? That sort of thing.
Yeah. AirDoctor stands up to the best of them. So we love them for that.
And then the bedroom, I just wanted to mention a couple of things.
Again, when we’re talking about allergens in specific and toxicants for
that matter, the main thing I wanted to talk about was bedding itself.
We talked about Batman’s dog bed downstairs from Silverite. This
company, like I said, we knew about the dog bed because we got our
pillows from them. So again, this pillow is lined with Kapok, which is just
kind of naturally pathogen-resistant, microbial resistant, that sort of
thing.
And then this case is again, lined with silver that actually kills any
pathogen that tries to make their home there. So it’s pretty cool. Also,
we’re really big on mattresses. In particular, when you’re thinking about
a mattress, you want to be thinking again non-toxic because you’re
sleeping on that thing.
And same on the pillow, actually. When we’re talking about foam, unless
you’re talking about a non-toxic mattress, non-toxic pillow, that’s foam,
and that is chemicals, and those chemicals are off-gassing. So definitely
something else to be aware of when it comes to your bed, what’s it
made out of.
We like a brand called Spindle. There are a whole lot of good ones out
there, but we feel like that’s one of the best. And again, we already
touched on this in the clothing section, so I’m not going to go too in-
depth, but because it is one of our hot button issues, I have to at least
mention it when we’re talking about the bedroom.
If you’re watching this for your child, there’s absolutely no logical sense
why their pajamas should be doused in flame retardants. It makes no
sense whatsoever unless your child happens to be sleeping next to
an open flame. They’ve got a candle next to their bed or something all
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night.
I don’t know why it makes any logical sense to have flame retardants
that are off-gassing, continually off-gassing these chemicals, these
compounds not only into their nose but directly into their skin. Again,
if your child is going through eczema, the last thing you want is for the
whole time they’re sleeping to have literally these chemicals, these
compounds, these toxic compounds being released into their skin as
they sleep all night.
Again, it makes no sense whatsoever for any purposes. This initially
drove us crazy just looking in childhood cancer, but now it drives us
crazy thinking about childhood eczema. So I wanted to make sure that
the workaround for this is that the pajamas are tight-fitting. And so
they’re not required by law to have flame retardants on those.
So there you go. That about does it for the air purification and bedroom/
bedding/pajamas section, and also does it for the home tour. Again, by
no means extensive. If you want an in-depth room-by-room kind of look
at everything we do, that’s where you can find us on YouTube and social
media platforms like that.
But again, for skin-specific stuff, I think we covered a lot of the big ones
here. I hope that gave you some ideas in terms of what to be thinking
about. Again, one more time, just everything you bring into your home
from this point forward, that’s the thing that gets considered as could
this be toxic or is there a non-toxic option, that sort of thing.
And then just be thinking about every individual object in your home.
And if it turns out to be toxic, how big of a deal would it be to replace
that sort of thing. But that being said, hope you got some good ideas out
of this. We’ll get back to the class. Hope that gave you a good idea of the
areas to start addressing if you haven’t already in your home.
[30:00]
Like we always say, you spend most of your time there. Make it your
healing sanctuary, not a place that’s itself going to harm your body.
Avoiding environmental toxicity is always a good idea, but there are also
eczema-specific environmental triggers to be aware of.
Things that might not be a big deal in many cases, completely natural
under normal circumstances. But these are things that are all known
to cause irritation to eczema specifically. We’ll keep beating this drum
a million different ways, but this is what we found. The more you can
avoid irritation of all kinds, the more you can avoid inflammation, which
means the more space you give your skin and entire body to do what it
needs to do to heal.
Teddy: And you’ll see that a lot of these eczema-specific environmental
triggers are things you could very well be interacting with day in and day
out. And not really be able to make the connection that they’re what’s
keeping you inflamed until you’re actually on the lookout for them and
start connecting the dots in your mind.
Some of these we’ll do a more deep-dive video on. Some we’ll just
talk about here. And right up front for you, we’re going to take a look
at soaps, detergents, shampoos, and cleaners of all kinds. So like we
mentioned, the things that you could be interacting just in your normal
day-to-day life could actually be triggering your flare-ups.
So it’s really important for everything that you bring into your home to
be very intentional and to actually look at the ingredients. So we’re going
to show you some of the products that we use in our own home, just to
make sure that we’re not contributing to any flare-ups, but by all means,
there are a ton of natural products on the market. These are just some
of our favorites.
So we’ll start with our laundry detergent. We’ve been using My Green
Fills for years. We love it. It’s also refillable. So it comes in these handy
little packets, and we’ve had the one plastic bottle literally since we
started with them years ago. And it’s just a great all-around non-toxic
laundry detergent.
Ryan: Yeah. The owner, Steven Hazel, actually started this company
based off his son going through, I don’t know if it was eczema?
Teddy: It was eczema.
Ryan: It was eczema. So yeah, having really severe flare-ups, and
finally, they couldn’t figure out the cause or what was triggering flare-
ups. And they finally pinned it on the laundry detergent. They switched
to a natural laundry detergent, and My Green Fills was born. So good
product to have around. A good product to be talking about on the
event, for sure.
Teddy: Absolutely. And so laundry detergent is great and obviously
super important to be washing our clothes with. But there have also
been studies where any detergent, even if it’s non-toxic, can still be too
much detergent and still be contributing. So another option that we
have for washing clothes are these crazy magnets.
Ryan: Yeah. I mean, they’re advertised as just as effective as detergent.
I wouldn’t maybe go that far, but it’s pretty close. It’s pretty close. You
literally just stick one on each side of your washer, and the scientific
explanation is something to the effect of it lowers the surface tension of
the water, which is the same thing detergent does.
I don’t really know any more than that, but I mean, like I said, it’s crazy.
You just put these magnets on either side of your washer and run your
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load. Stuff feels a little more washed with the detergent, but again, if
you’re having a hard time just with any detergent and you put on your
clothes, you’re still getting a flare-up, check out the magnets. It’s the
magnetic laundry system. There you go.
Teddy: But above all, just making sure whatever detergent or non-
detergent item you’re using is completely non-toxic. And we refer
constantly to ewg.org, Environmental Working Group. And you can go
check your product.
Type in the name of the product that you’re using or intending to use
if you’re at the grocery store shopping for products and just make sure
that you are using A-rated products, which is so important for really
anybody, but especially if you are susceptible and going through any
sort of these chronic skin conditions.
Ryan: We should also probably know so you don’t have to go tracking
down the magnetic laundry system or any of this stuff we mentioned.
We keep all this stuff really well up to date on the “what we use” section
of our website, thesternmethod.com.
So anything we use between supplements or stuff around the house, or
healing devices or whatever, it’s all there on the site, so you don’t have
to go looking for it. What do we got next?
Teddy: Next, to stay with the laundry theme for a minute, we have these
dryer balls, and I believe that the package came with six of them, and
we do have them. Sometimes they get stuck when I remove a load of
laundry from the dryer. They’re still just kind of in there, and I have to
dig them out.
These are wool balls that help to soften your clothes naturally without
adding in any toxic laundry sheets. And even though they do have non-
toxic laundry sheets available, the reason why we prefer these is just for
less waste, which is just another reason why we love My Green Fills so
much. We just prefer not adding to the waste that is already in existence
as much as possible. So these laundry balls are great. We have had
these for--
Ryan: A long time.
Teddy: Probably six years. Maybe it’s even time to get some new ones.
I know that you can also make them yourselves. They’re very easy to
make. So next, we will talk about just a couple of our favorite cleaning
products. Most recently, we’ve added the SaniTru to the mix, which I am
loving. And Ryan can actually talk a little bit more about the science on
why this is such a great option to have.
Ryan: Yeah. So in terms of non-toxic cleaning that also disinfects, we’ll
talk about disinfectant more in a second, but there have been a few
products on the market that have gotten a lot of attention recently that
they found a way to stabilize hypochlorous acid, which is-- it’s actually a
molecule that your white blood cells make in killing pathogens.
So there’s been a lot of excitement around these products that managed
to stabilize this molecule. This just came out recently, actually. It’s even
cooler. It’s the SaniTru. And it actually produces it on the spot. So instead
of having to keep buying a stabilized solution of the hypochlorous acid,
this thing just makes it on the spot with a little bit of vinegar and a little
bit of salt, and some water.
Teddy: Typically, the products that you buy with-- I’m not even going to
try to say that word.
Ryan: Hypochlorous acid.
Teddy: Thank you. The shelf life is really technically only for a week
unless they add in some other sort of preservative to it.
Ryan: Preservative, stabilizer, or something. So it’s an extra ingredient
that why use it when you could not be using it. And why continuously
be-- we are big on trying to reduce waste in any way we can. So we just
got this one bottle, and it’s just making it on the spot. That much better.
And on that note, we just talked about disinfectant, which when people
think about cleaning, that’s one of the big things they think about is
disinfecting. That is true.
And we kind of rotate. We disinfect, but we also reintroduce good
bacteria into our environment. I mean, we’re going to be talking a lot
about the skin biome in future modules. And obviously, there’s the gut
biome, but what a lot of people don’t really think is there’s also a biome
in nature. If you walk outside, it’s full of bacteria, the dirt everywhere.
If you can get your home to kind of mimic that and not be just the sterile
environment, then all the better. So we use a few of this company’s
products. This one is the cleaner. The brand is P2 Probiotic Power. And
what’s neat about this is it’s kind of dual-action. One, like I mentioned,
it introduces good bacteria into the environment, but then it also has
special enzymes in there that break down biofilms that pathogens like to
hide in.
So you are getting that disinfecting property. It’s just in a different sense
than just completely nuking everything. So again, we do a little bit of
both. We’ll typically clean mostly with P2 Probiotic Power, but then for
cleaning board or just anything that seems particularly grimy, we’ll hit it
with the SaniTru. And that seems to be a pretty good combo.
Teddy: All right. So next on our table here, we’re going to talk a little bit
about soaps, personal care products. So this one, we haven’t really dived
too much into the research, but we both talked and agreed that we
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wanted to share it specifically with you guys because this Ormus soap
here…
[40:00]
And it’s all organic. It has olive oil, coconut oil, camellia seed, castor seed
oil, cocoa seed butter, some essential oils in it. So Ryan had a wart on his
baby finger for well over 10 years. And this thing was--
Ryan: It wasn’t going anywhere anytime fast. I got the thing frozen off a
while back.
Teddy: And it came right back.
Ryan: And it came back, and I even had to freeze it off. And then this
was before we were all into the natural stuff. They had me some kind of
hardcore prescription that I had to put on. Yeah. That lasted for a few
months. And the thing just came right back.
Teddy: I mean, I think it was like that animal, like a cockroach. The kind
of thing that literally could survive anything.
Ryan: And it did survive. Yeah. And then, just more recently, I tried just
nuking it with essential oils. I thought I was going to be really smart.
There’s that kind of old wives’ tale about duct taping your wart. There’s
also people that talk about--
I mean, obviously, essential oils have a lot of antipathogenic property.
So I thought I was going to do both. I put all the hottest oils on there,
and then I duct-taped the thing. And I kept doing that for like a week on
end until it just exploded one day. And I looked like I had just burned my
finger off.
Teddy: He almost lost his finger, but the worst state and what we think
happened with the essential oils and the duct tape is that a chemical
reaction took place.
Ryan: Between the tape adhesive and essential oils. I didn’t think that
one through.
Teddy: So, if you’re using essential oils, it’s really important to make sure
you’re not combining any sort of toxic chemicals that could create some
sort of terrible reactions. So I mean, Ryan, it looked like he was about
to lose his finger. When it finally did heal, the wart was there stronger
than ever. And thank God he did not lose his finger because it was really
scary.
And actually, I’m laughing now, but at the time, we were seriously
contemplating getting him to an emergency room because it really did
look that bad. But fast-forward, we started getting this Ormus soap. And
Ormus is a type of mineral, which really gets a little bit more into the
woo-woo. But basically, he started washing his hands just a couple of
times a day with this, not even with the intention of taking the wart off,
but just--
Ryan: No. I just found out about Ormus. It’s kind of this special
energetically charged set of minerals, but just yeah, the energetic charge
around them is different. It would take an entire podcast episode or
something to really dive into the specifics of it.
But I started getting interested in it and the company, what is it?
Emmons Essential Essence, they just make-- you can take it. You can
just take it as a supplement, but then they also make a soap out of it. I
figured why not? So literally just washing my hands once a day with this
stuff. That’s the only thing that changed. And maybe like within the span
of a few weeks, what I’ve had for 10 years went away on the spot.
Teddy: Show them your pinky.
Ryan: Yeah. I mean, you’ll see the picture of when I tried to nuke it.
Yeah. Now, it’s gone.
Teddy: So, like we said, we haven’t dug a ton into the research other
than knowing that this is something that’s very natural. There’s nothing
in here that can hurt you or your skin conditions, even the other
ingredients in here. And because of what we experienced, our own
personal testimonial experience, we just thought that it was worth
sharing with you guys.
Ryan: And since then, we’ve just been applying it to a couple of areas
on Rocky. Yeah. Just after we realized this has happened, but it’s still
too early to really say how it is applied to Rocky, but since we’re talking
about soaps, we thought we’d throw it in there.
Teddy: Another soap that we have on our table is goat soap, which is
another really great option that doesn’t completely dry out the skin. So if
you have a chronic skin condition like eczema, psoriasis, rosacea, this is
a really great option to use is goat milk soap.
And then we decided as well to add in Eric Zielinski’s book here on DIY
recipes because sometimes there’s a specific thing that you’re going
for that you’re not going to find just over the counter in a grocery
store or on the internet. And that’s why I think that these DIY recipes
for shampoos, conditioners, body soaps, or any other personal care
products are so important.
Ryan: And specifically on shampoos, you can get the most natural of
shampoo that comes in a bottle, and almost all of them still have some
kind of preservative in there like we talk about. Even in organic, there’s
a ton of preservatives and a lot of different cosmetics, that sort of thing.
But again, with any kind of liquid shampoo and conditioner, that’s
almost always going to have some kind of preservative in it that can be a
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big trigger to eczema.
So that’s why we love Dr. Eric Zielinski’s book, The Healing Power Of
Essential Oils. He’s got a few of them out, but this one has a ton of DIY
recipes on there, and you can make your own shampoo and conditioner
at home.
Teddy: Yeah, using the essential oils that are the best researched for
your condition. So right now with Rocky, we’re actually only using soap
for him. He has just very fine baby hair, and we really keep bathing to a
minimum at this point for him anyways. So I think that about covers it
for our cleaning and personal care products.
Again, this is not everything that we use, but we just wanted to pull out
some of our absolute favorites and the ones that have been with us the
longest and the shortest. But just like we said, these are some of our
favorites, and they also happen to be very effective for the chronic skin
conditions.
Ryan: Let’s talk about dry climate. If you’re living in a very dry region of
the earth--
Teddy: Like ours.
Ryan: Indeed. That can be enough in and of itself to send sensitive
skin over the edge. And humidifier would be a very good idea. The only
thing to watch out for with humidifiers is their water tanks can turn into
breeding grounds for bacteria if you’re not careful. The best humidifier
we’ve found is the Dyson because it actually has a couple of built-in
mechanisms to guard against bacteria, and you can control the humidity
level really well.
The only problem is it’s also the most expensive. Of course, we did
decide it was worth it and went for it. The one thing we found when we
got it was that it has Wi-Fi on it. And as we just talked about, we’re not
big fans of that, but we were able to look up a way to turn it off pretty
easily online.
Another thing you can consider in boosting humidity in your home
is a water feature. You can find all sorts of neat designs for tabletop
or larger freestanding units. Since that water is continuously moving,
you don’t need to worry so much about bacteria, and you also get the
added benefits of producing negative ions, which are good to have an
abundance and making a nice pleasant sound in general. And it’s not
going to add quite as much humidity as an actual humidifier, but still
does a lot more than nothing.
Teddy: Let’s talk about preservatives. Hopefully, we all know by now to
be eating real food and avoiding preservatives like sodium benzoate as
much as possible for general health and healing. But what often goes
overlooked is preservatives in cosmetics and personal care products.
These can irritate existing eczema and can be the cause of leaky skin
and contributor to eczema in the first place, not to mention being linked
to cancer. So all around a good idea to avoid. There are so many 100%
natural products for all applications these days. It just makes no sense
whatsoever to be rubbing chemicals of any kind onto yourself.
Definitely stay away from anything with the word paraben in it. But in
general, just get products that each individual ingredient comes from a
plant with a name you recognize, and you’re good to go. I won’t say any
more about this as this area is one of the Zielinski’s fortes. So definitely
be watching Dr. and Mama Z’s, their videos for deeper dives into all
things natural, cosmetics, and personal care
Ryan: Rubber is another one you might not expect, but it is a common
irritant to eczema. We actually noticed this when we were using natural
rubber latex gloves to apply the cream you’ll hear about in the advanced
protocol section. And we were thinking we were doing the most natural
thing and noticed it was irritating Rocky’s skin, so we stopped.
And only later in our research did we come to find it’s actually a known
irritant. Nickel, very common irritant to eczema. And it’s found in
metallic products of all kinds. Even a lot of supposedly nickel-free jewelry
sadly still contains nickel.
It’s safest and easiest in most cases to just avoid metal as much as you
can while you’re healing. But if there are items you would really rather
not live without, there are do it at home tests you can use on these
things to see if they do or don’t have nickel in them.
[50:00]
Teddy: Grass or sand, talk about a couple of the most natural-sounding
things, but again, in eczema could very well be a problem. This is
obviously and especially a big concern for kids if they’re being kids out
rolling around in the grass or playing in the sandbox or something. But
hey, maybe you’re an adult and like to do those things yourself, more
power to you. You’re way ahead of the game on the living naturally front.
You may just need to back off for a bit while you’re healing.
And we’re still noticing it with Rocky, even though his skin has healed up
completely and looks amazing. Whenever I sat him down on the grass in
the park, he does get a little bit of irritation. And lastly, we have synthetic
clothing, which we are going to head over to the bedroom for, for a
closer look at how we pick out clothes for Rocky.
So I have pulled from Rocky’s closet some of our favorite things that
we think are the most useful for those going through any sort of
chronic skin conditions. So Rocky is our third child and really our first to
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experience a mostly organic clothing wardrobe. And yes, a lot of that is
in part to do with his chronic skin condition.
Another reason is just that we wanted to have him be in organic clothes,
even before we knew how severe his eczema was. And with the first two
kids, we really thought organic clothing was just completely unattainable
and out of our budget.
So unless we were gifted some nice organic pajamas, which we always
did the pajamas just to avoid flame retardants, we really didn’t put too
much thought into organic clothes for them. But as it turns out, organic
clothes aren’t really as expensive as you would think. And they’ve come
down significantly in price over the years as well. And if you just go
online, you can find a ton of organic clothing options.
I basically have this sweatshirt for him in about five different colors.
So he ends up wearing pretty much the same outfit in different color
variations every single day, but it’s what I know works for him. So I keep
it really simple. You’ll notice that the tag is non-existent. It’s just this
writing on here. This is by a company called Loved Baby. It’s super soft.
The onesies I have found Honest Baby and Burt’s Bees.
You can just get five packs, and they’re not super expensive. And he
just re-wears these over and over and over. The socks, Burt’s Bees, are
organic. The pants as well. And we wanted to mention this too because,
with the organic clothes, you’re not going to have the flame retardants,
those extra chemicals, especially on kids where they have to put flame
retardants in looser fitting pajamas.
So if you don’t get organic, at least tightly fitted cotton isn’t going to have
those added flame retardants in them.
Ryan: We should probably emphasize here. We’re talking about pure--
whether it’s organic or not. I mean, organic is awesome because then
that means the cotton-- no pesticides were used in the growing of that
cotton, which is just one less thing that could potentially irritate.
But that aside, we’re talking about 100% pure cotton, no polyester
clothing, no cotton-polyester blends, no rayon. Or any of these different
synthetic fabrics have been shown to really cause a lot of irritation
and triggering when it comes to eczema. So yeah, the organic stuff is
awesome. And we love everything that we just talked about, but the
really key thing is just don’t have any synthetic material in your clothes.
Teddy: Right. Exactly. Pretty much everything for Rocky is 100% cotton.
When he can’t wear basically these three outfits over and over, we
supplement with, say like a pair of shorts or a different t-shirt. At the
very least, it has to be 100% cotton touching his skin.
And given the fact that we live in a very cold climate for six months out
of the year here in the mountains of Utah, we do have to use some of
the synthetic fabrics that Ryan was talking about just from a practicality
standpoint.
So what we end up doing is surrounding his body with 100% cotton. In
this case, organic clothing. We put the hood on him. It’s covering every
section of his body. And then we put the jackets and the snowsuits over
that clothing. So none of those synthetic materials are actually touching
his skin, which is very important.
This is really just for babies. And this masterclass is talking about
everybody going through skin conditions. I still thought it was worth
mentioning what diapers we use for Rocky because these are 100%
hemp diapers, and that’s what’s actually touching his skin. But then, like
the example I used for the snowsuit, I have this diaper cover here, which
is polyester that goes over the diapers so that he doesn’t get wet.
And it doesn’t actually touch his skin, but it’s a lot better than a plastic
diaper anyways, touching him too. Maybe you’re starting to see a
pattern here is that we do try to be intentional about the types of waste
that we do add and only if absolutely necessary. But if there’s a way not
to do it and especially a way that’s healthier anyways, we’re going to
always try to do that.
Ryan: Yeah. And that saves a ton of money. We bought these diapers
one time versus continuing to buy new diapers every couple of days.
Teddy: Yes. And if you’re not into cloth diapering and you have a baby,
it’s really not as hard as it seems. I think cloth diapers have come a long
way from my understanding with parents from different generations. So
this clothing here is really exciting. And it comes in adult sizes as well.
So this company is Remedy Wear, and they are incredible. This material
is actually quite a bit softer than even just these organic clothes. And
these are pajamas that also have zinc inside to help with itching if
you’re going through some extremely itchy periods with whatever skin
condition you’re going through.
For the infant clothes, they also have the hand coverings, which is nice
too. And we’ll talk about that more on symptom management so that
you’re not adding that irritation from scratching. Also, some nice things
about this are the seams are on the outside, and the tag is on the
outside, which I just think is so thoughtful for somebody that is already
suffering enough from being itchy to not add to that discomfort.
Ryan: Yeah. I mean, this company was founded by a mother of a child
that went through severe eczema. So yeah, everything about it is with
eczema sufferers in mind.
Teddy: Like I said, they make these in adult sizes as well. So for
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undergarments and that sort of thing or sleepwear, it’s really nice
knowing that you have a company that is going out of their way for
people suffering with chronic skin conditions to make you more
comfortable.
So definitely check out Remedy Wear. That’s our favorite that we
have found in this journey. And I think as far as clothes go, that about
covers just some of our absolute favorites that we thought were worth
mentioning to you.
Ryan: That about does it for our piece of the environmental toxins
and triggers section. Just to recap, you’re going to want to start making
the big changes in all the areas we talked about when it comes to
environmental toxicants in your home.
This is something you’ll do for eczema, but trust us when we say you’re
also doing it for your whole family’s health and longevity, as these
household toxicants are linked to all the worst diseases. And again, carry
that list of triggers around with you for a few days and see where you’re
coming into contact with them in your life.
Again, a lot of these things are everyday items. So you’re really going to
need to have this at the top of your mind for a while throughout your
day while you’re figuring out what it is that might be giving you the
mysterious flare-ups.
Teddy: Definitely go check out the Zielinski’s lesson today. As we
mentioned, they’ve got a very complementary approach to non-toxic
living. To us, I can assure you you’ll learn a whole lot of neat DIY stuff
from Mama Z on how to literally take the ingredients and a lot of these
products into your own hands.
We’ll see you back here for lesson three: Bacteria, Fungi, and
Inflammation, where it’s going to start to get a little more fun if you can
call this stuff fun. Now that we’ve addressed finding the internal cause
and all this stuff you need to remove from your environment, we’ll
have more of the how-to style videos for you and really start diving into
everything you can do to get this thing under control.
ENVIRONMENTAL TOXINS AND
TRIGGERS
Guest: Dr. Eric and Sabrina Zielinski
Dr. Zielinski: Hello, and welcome to lesson two: Environmental Toxins

and Triggers. In this lesson, you are going to learn about avoiding
chemicals in body care and cleaning products, the ingredients you need
to make your own, the importance of using non-toxic home and body
products.
And we’ll wrap up with a wonderful DIY segment with my wife, Mama Z,
to show you how to make an immune-boosting blend of essential oils,
healthy liquid hand soap, and a non-toxic bathroom cleaner that won’t
irritate your skin. Ready to get started? Me too.
To begin, let’s call out the elephant in the room. Why are known
carcinogens in bathroom products? And does skin absorb enough
known carcinogens to really matter? Well, like we learned in lesson one,
your skin is the largest organ in your body, and it does absorb a lot.
Absorbency is not really the problem, though. Permeability is.
Your skin is permeable, meaning it not only absorbs substances it
contacts, it also allows them through the skin and into other tissues,
such as the subcutaneous fat layer. Many of the chemicals found in
conventional home and body care products are inflammatory in nature
and carcinogenic. They’re fat-soluble, which presents a huge problem.
When exposed over long periods of time, the protective hypodermis,
the subcutaneous fat layer of your skin, fails to protect you. Your skin’s
innermost layer is a layer of fat that protects us from thermal shock
and other harm. Unfortunately, in the case of fat-soluble chemicals and
carcinogens, this protection backfires.
If the ingredients in your home and body care products penetrate
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through your upper skin layers, usually with the addition of penetration
enhancers, which are frequently fat-soluble, it is readily absorbed into
your own tissue, where it does much-unintended harm.
So how much inflammation do you really want, and how will you
decide how much is too much when considering exposure to known
carcinogens? Is even a very small amount of mercury acceptable in
your child’s dental filling, and how much formaldehyde do you want to
absorb? What is a tolerable amount of coal tar in your daughter’s lip
balm?
These questions need to be answered. Sadly for our American friends, it
appears that the United States is the least protected first-world nation.
The European Union, with Japan and Canada not too far behind, has
literally banned over 1300 cosmetic ingredients due to safety concerns,
while the US only banned 11.
People are increasingly aware that skin is more like living fabric than
living plastic wrap. Doctors prescribe transdermal patches to distribute
some medications without stomach upset or to ensure a continuous
dose over time as the patient’s skin will solely absorb the medicine
through all its layers and into the tissue beneath.
Unfortunately, beneficial medications are not the only substances that
can travel through the skin into the body. Harmful ingredients and
anything we touch may travel just as readily. When dealing with known
skin-damaging chemicals and carcinogens, it is obviously common sense
to err on the side of caution.
Don’t forget your skin is very absorbent and permeable, but it is not
the only inroad for known carcinogens in your body care and cleaning
products. Many contain artificial fragrances, which become airborne
when used. So when you inhale them more readily, lung irritation is a
real risk when considering body care and cleaning ingredients.
The lovely scent you inhale may enter into your lungs and cause
inflammation throughout your body, which can contribute to eczema,
psoriasis, and skin disease. That’s why we use essential oils instead of
fake synthetic fragrances.
Just a few drops of citrus oils transform your cleaning products
into mood-boosting fat scrubbing tools. Same with lavender and
frankincense in your body care. Your sense of smell will enjoy a blissful
aromatic retreat, and your skin will thank you because of their anti-
inflammatory healing properties.
For my list takers out there, be on the lookout for these 12 chemicals
in your home and body products: formaldehyde, phthalates, parabens,
synthetic coloring, synthetic fragrance, pesticides, triclosan and
triclocarban, toluene, propylene glycol, alkyl-phenols, sodium laurel
sulfate/sodium laureth sulfate, and sunscreen chemicals.
The scary thing is that no product manufacturer is going to list
formaldehyde or pesticides on their ingredient label. Instead, for
example, you’ll see bronopol or DMDM, which are known formaldehyde
releasers. I’ll refer you to the DIY body care natural cleaners books you
received when registering for this course to learn more about these
chemicals and their aliases.
So what are the most toxic skin disease-causing products that people
use on a regular basis? You may be surprised. First, antibacterial hand
washes, hand sanitizers, and cleansers are among the worst, especially
those marketed for use by children. In fact, they are number one in my
public enemy list.
They regularly contain triclosan or a toxic substitute sodium laurel
sulfate, phthalates, parabens, and formaldehyde. They’re also packaged
in bottles made of alkyl-phenols, BPA, or BPS. Additionally, there’s really
no evidence to suggest that they benefit people at all. And research has
shown that they are creating dangerous strains of antibiotic-resistant
bacteria, making them something to avoid really whenever is possible.
Second is sunscreen/sunblock. With estrogenic ingredient and
preservatives like formaldehyde, BPA, or BPS in the bottle and synthetic
color and fragrances, most of the available commercial sunscreens pose
significant risks. Add that to the fact that they are linked to the very skin
cancer they are meant to prevent, it only makes sense to seek non-toxic
alternatives.
Third, and surprisingly, is nail polish and other nail products. They’re far
worse for your health and your daughter’s health than you may believe.
They combine nearly every known carcinogen listed above in one bottle.
At a minimum, toluene, formaldehyde, synthetic color, and many more.
Even the 3-free brands or 5-, 3-, 7-free, whatever free contain numerous
serious harmful effects and ingredients, many of which have been
known to cause skin disease and even cancer.
The solution is to purchase non-toxic varieties of these products or,
better yet, to save a buck or two, make your own. If you’re feeling
overwhelmed by the sheer volume of poison all around you, rest
assured, there are safe, effective alternatives.
The best news is the ingredients in DIY body care natural cleaners are
multi-purpose. Meaning the Castile baby soap you just bought to replace
your child’s baby wash and shampoo can also be the main ingredient in
your body wash recipe, your shampoo base, and even a main ingredient
in your laundry soap, dish soap, and counter scrub.
You’ll want to stock up on these ingredients. Castile soap, whether bars
or liquid, replaces almost any soap or cleanser. It’s gentle, safe, and
effective. Apple cider vinegar is not just for your salads. It’s a naturally
occurring mild acid and great at cleaning many things, and is often used
as a clarifying rinse. Baking soda is safe enough to use as a soak and
scrub if diluted properly.
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Borax. Yes, borax. Prior to the invention of commercial shampoo, most
women washed their hair with eggs and borax solutions. Aloe gel,
whether fresh or bottled, is very soothing to skin of all types and ages.
Aloe gel can replace many lotions and creams and is a main ingredient
in Mama Z’s skin healing serum that we show you how to make in lesson
three.
Witch Hazel is a natural astringent, and it’s not as harsh as commercial
products with rubbing alcohol, yet it’s very effective. Avocado, actually
the food, avocado used alone is tremendously healing and soothing. It
also makes for a luxurious moisturizing facial mask.
Food grade oils like olive, coconut, or sesame can be used alone as
healing cleansing oils or as carrier oils in recipes to replace commercial
lotions and creams. And my favorite diluted essential oils, such as
lavender, frankincense, Roman chamomile, neroli, Rosemary, and
oregano, are widely used for skin healing properties in conjunction with
many natural healing recipes.
And don’t forget flax seed soaked in water overnight makes a great hair
gel, and ground flax is used in many scrub recipes as well. Bentonite
or French clay have historically been used as mask for clarifying and
detoxifying agent for glowing skin. Raw honey is very healing for the
skin and helps promote probiotic activity and reduce acne. And raw milk
has long been prized for its hydroxy acid and used in milk baths. In fact,
Cleopatra made milk baths a famous beauty treatment.
[10:00]
Fruit acids as well are a natural source of alpha and beta hydroxy
acids. Mashed, blended, or freshly juiced fruits like dried lemon, apple,
cremolada from grapes or strawberries.
And of course, you could purchase cleaner, safer prepared products
at the store. Be sure to check before you do with the Environmental
Working Group or some other watchdog organization for scorecards on
better options when trying to buy home and body care items.
Of course, there are a myriad of other environmental toxins and triggers
that cause skin flare-ups and contribute to eczema, psoriasis, and skin
disease. I’ll refer you to the other videos in this lesson to learn more
about them and how to protect your skin and the skin of your entire
family. Well, that’s it. That’s a wrap. Now let’s make some DIY goodies
with Mama Z from our book, The Essential Oils Apothecary.
So one thing that we have found is that avoiding environmental toxins
and triggers is one of the most important things that we could do to
prevent and treat skin diseases like eczema, psoriasis and also help
build our immune function, which is a key component to avoiding
chronic conditions.
That’s why we’re going to cover Mama Z’s wonderful smelling-- and I
wish you were here because the aroma is just popping at us. And by the
way, don’t do what we’re doing. Always put caps on your essential oils
because we’re just smelling it right now but because we love you, we’re
sacrificing the essential oils because what happens is, by the way, this is
a good little tip.
The more that you keep the bottle open, the more oxygen gets into
the essential oil. And it speeds up the aging process. If you keep the
essential oil completely sealed for 2, 3, 5, 10, 20 years, that’s fine.
But when you have the lid open, then oxygen comes in. It speeds up
oxidation. And that can cause the essential oils to go rancid.
So we’ll submit these as sacrifices, as tribute for you, but I wish you
could be here because this aroma is wonderful. We are going to avoid
toxins and environmental triggers, hand soap. What do you got?
Sabrina: Yes, this is our healthy hand soap. We make this all of the time.
So I’m excited to share this with you. We are using our immune-boosting
blend, and that is in this small five-milliliter bottle. We did 10 drops of
each of these essential oils. So we have cinnamon, clove, eucalyptus,
lemon, orange, and Rosemary. All of that in there. It’s an amazing
fragrance, but it is also so beneficial for your body.
Dr. Zielinski: A quick note on that, cinnamon, we prefer cinnamon
bark because the healing benefits of cinnamon bark is it’s rich in
cinnamaldehyde and eucalyptus it could be either eucalyptus radiata or
eucalyptus globulus, whatever it is. And orange, whatever. Sweet, wild,
blood orange, whatever it is. We have found there’s no difference.
But here’s the key: this blend, according to the research, has been
shown clinically proven to kill the flu virus. Just think about that. All
right. This is a powerhouse blend, and all of your favorite essential
oil manufacturers have their own version of this. All right. Immune-
boosting blends are everywhere.
And we love to wash our hands and moisturize our hands with
something that’s not going to kill the good bacteria because research
has shown that this won’t kill the good bacteria. It targets the bad
bacteria and the fungi, and the viruses. Wonderful, beautiful, innate
intelligence that God gave to plants.
Sabrina: Well, and I must say that my four-and-a-half-year-old in her K4
class, we wanted to make sure that she had healthy hand soaps. So I
started making this for her class, and all the other kids liked it so much
that instead of using the traditional stuff, I have one in the bathroom
because they have a classroom with a bathroom and one at their sink.
So about every other week, we’re filling it up again. And we don’t mind
because everybody is getting that healthy immune-boosting with their
soap. So it’s awesome. All right. So we’re going to start out with our
distilled water. This is a fourth of a cup of distilled water.
Dr. Zielinski: And why distilled? Can I test you? Oh, man. I stumped
there.
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Sabrina: I thought you were going to talk?
Dr. Zielinski: Ah, stop Mama Z. All right, tap water, we love tap water if
it’s purified, but here’s the thing about tap water. You don’t know truly,
even if it’s reverse osmosis and hydrogen, whatever, there still can be
bacterial overgrowth even when it comes to your pipes. Distilled water,
when it comes to any aqueous solution, water is not our friend because
water will cause these types of solutions to go rancid quick.
By the way, this is a one-month recipe. Keep in mind, even though you
might not smell it going rancid, it’s been shown, and we’ve consulted
with-- we have very close friends who are cosmetic formulators. This
is what they do for a living, you all. So when you use water-based
preparations, you have to use them up within a month.
So make a small enough batch that you know you’ll use within a month.
Otherwise, they go rancid. Another way of slowing that down is to put
it in the fridge. Well, probably you don’t want your hand soap in your
fridge, but when we do her healing serum or something like that, yeah,
that goes in the fridge. So anyway, distilled water, if you don’t have it, no
big deal, but just know that if you use tap water, it will go bad quicker.
Sabrina: And if you’re someone that travels or travels often, because
you don’t want to get into an environment-- for me, at least that my skin
will react to other types of water, I always use distilled water when we
travel, no matter what. That’s what I get. I even take it to hotel rooms. So
we’re also going to use a fourth of a cup of Castile soap.
Dr. Zielinski: Do we have a favorite brand? Who do we use?
Sabrina: We use the Dr. Bronner’s.
Dr. Zielinski: We like Dr. Bronner’s. We will Dr. Bronner’s a thumbs
up. Love their toothpaste. And hey, in a pinch, if you are going to buy
toothpaste or buy hand soap. Castile soap is great.
Sabrina: Absolutely. You could always use another healthy soap as well,
but this is the one that we like. All right. So now we’re going to get into
our vitamin E, and I actually really like the-- there is the Jason brand, and
it is just vitamin E. It doesn’t have any fillers or anything else.
You really have to look for that because there are other ones available
on the market, even from the same brand that do have fillers in them.
And if you’re not allergic to any of those fillers, then that’s fine. We also
did a teaspoon of that vitamin E and a teaspoon of jojoba oil.
Dr. Zielinski: And all this stuff is easy to get on Amazon, right? Or at
your natural health food store.
Sabrina: Yes. And most of this stuff came from our natural health food
store. And you can use both options, but when you can, buying local is
always really important.
Dr. Zielinski: Now, here’s where you can have fun. All right. So this
recipe, by the way, is featured in The Essential Oils Apothecary book. And
we say use whatever oils you want to use. Literally, this is at a point
where as you learn how to use essential oils, you learn that certain ones
interact and impact you in a unique way.
So if you want an uplifting mood, then you could use citrus oils,
bergamot, lime, neroli, petitgrain, orange, lemon, whatever. If you want
maybe more energetic feel, like you want to actually feel energetic,
peppermint and wintergreen and spearmint, these are wonderful oils
that actually help open up your airways.
If you want something to soothe and calm, maybe help you get into that
rest and digest I want to sleep at night kind of mood, then that’s where
the lavender and the vetivers and the Roman chamomiles and the
cedarwoods and the pine, the tree oils can help.
So you do what you want to do based off of what you’re trying to
accomplish, and give us a quick tip on what you do because every
season, you go through your thing, the diffusers, the hand soaps, the
laundry soaps. It’s like Mama Z does-- okay, everyone. We’re shifting
gears. So what’s your tip on how to do that?
Sabrina: So I do it two ways, and I do based on the location of the
house. So, for instance, when we’re getting into gardening season, I’m
going in and out downstairs in my basement. So in that bathroom, I
have peppermint. Okay. Up in the kitchen, let’s say during the Christmas
season, I might use peppermint and some kind of a bark or something.
It all depends on what the season is.
When we’re into the fall, I have a fall scent that I make. It’s kind of like a
pumpkin pie spice version of essential oils. Also, the immune-boosting
blend, but I’m going to vary them in different places. Also, for the kids.
A lot of times, when the kids wake up, they’re excited, and they’re
energetic and stuff like that. So we want to harness some of that energy.
And so one of them is kind of toned down for-- they have two sinks. So
one of them is toned down for the evening, and we’re going to have the
lavender, the chamomile, those kinds of things.
The other one has orange, ginger together, which is really good. It’s
really balancing for them as well. And it just depends on where you’re
at. So, kind of pre-think where you’re at and the seasons because those
change. I even have a love blend that I make during the Valentine’s day.
So there’s all different ones. And then I just rotate them out.
Dr. Zielinski: What’s that used for? PG13 version. Well, we actually cover
libido and erectile dysfunction because that’s, by the way--
Sabrina: You just want to set the mood.
Dr. Zielinski: I do. Most people don’t know this, but out of all the
millions of people that go to our website every year, the number one
search about essential oils is essential oils for sex. People are typing that
up.
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[20:00]
But by the way, we rarely get questions from people about that. So
people are asking us with their fingertips. So you could set the mood
and even in your hand soap you all. So come on. Have fun.
Sabrina: And I really like to compliment what’s going on. So if I have this
particular scent in the bathroom and it’s uplifting or whatever, during
the morning, you want those scents to carry on each other. So if you’re
going to tone it down at night, you have a couple of sinks, have one
that’s more uplifting, and one that’s more relaxing if that’s how your
bathroom works.
And then you want to correspond your diffuser, and it doesn’t have to
match your recipe either because you really do want to do a variety of
different essential oils. So I might have just straight lavender in the hand
soap, but then you might want to use lavender and peppermint and
chamomile and some other sleep oils.
However, I just try to keep it, so they don’t contradict each other. And
then that way it flows because if you want to put a few drops of those
same essential oils in a carrier oil and give your loved one or yourself
a foot massage, then all of those things work together harmoniously,
especially when you’re talking about a detox bath or other things. You
want all of those scents to be harmonious together.
So think through your day and what your needs are, and then set the
tone and then rotate those based on the seasons or when your diffuser
is done, but already have that kind of preplanned in your mind. And one
of the things like he mentioned, these don’t last forever.
So even if I premake certain bases, I don’t add the essential oils till later,
but on ones like this, where they can go bad faster, then you want to go
ahead and make them on the spot. You can make some of these things
in advance and more of them.
But just know about what you go through in that month because if
you have more than one soap dispenser, then you’re able to spread
those out and then use that up within that month and then add those
essential oils right before you’re going to start using them.
Dr. Zielinski: Yeah. I mean, you make a good point because you can
make a concentrate of this, put all the oils in there with the vitamin E.
Just don’t add water, and you could put those in your pantry, and those
can last for years. And then when you’re ready, pop in the water, shake it
up. You’re done.
When we talk about proper planning prevents poor performance, those
five Ps, it’s like getting yourself ready in a situation where when you
don’t have, let’s say, 10, 15 minutes to get out all the ingredients, it’s
there, and it’s done.
Sabrina: And a little pro tip with that, make sure you put the date on
there and make sure you put a note of what things you still need to add
because if you don’t, you always think you’re going to remember. Oh, I
probably did that last year. And it was three years ago or, oh, I forgot to
add the water. And you’re like, what is wrong with this hand soap?
So you just need to make sure that you write yourself a note. Just
make sure that when you’re writing those notes, don’t trust that you’ll
remember each and every phase because you may have more things
that you’re making in your house, and you’re not going to be able to
keep all of those things straight unless you make good notes.
Dr. Zielinski: So the reason why we focus on avoiding environmental
toxins and triggers with our body care because, quite frankly, that’s
where a lot of the toxins are that people are being inundated with all
day long. And we’ve talked about this many times, and we can’t stress
enough the importance of avoiding antibacterial products.
I mean, they should be outlawed. And by the way, if you remember, in
2020, the Food and Drug Administration even said, hey, these, whatever
it was at the time, 75 to 100 hand sanitizers don’t use because there’s
toxic chemicals in them, which are known as neuro disruptors, cancer-
causing agents linked to autoimmunity, allergies, and a slew of other
problems.
So I’ll just tell you, when it comes down to it, if you don’t even have
time to do this, getting an unscented, non-toxic version of a hand soap,
putting it in a glass container, adding some essential oils, done. That’s
the easy peasy way of doing this if you really don’t want to DIY to the
level that we are.
But to stress the importance that you can avoid the phthalates and the
artificial fragrances, and the chemicals that literally ruin your skin and
hurt your skin. Not only have they been linked to eczema, psoriasis, skin
disease, but they cause internal inflammation. These are the number
one cause of leaky skin.
And we cover leaky skin in depth because a lot of folks talk about leaky
gut. More people are talking about leaky skin, but your immune system
starts with the first layer. Your first barrier is your skin. And when
your skin is damaged, too dry, when it doesn’t have proper hydration,
ultimately what happens are the chemicals that we put on our body
care, and we clean with, they end up seeping into our bloodstream.
And so there is a reason, truthfully, there is a reason why we’re seeing
such a high rise in Alzheimer’s, dementia, autoimmune conditions, and
neurocognitive problems. Of course, allergies and respiratory concerns
because you’re breathing in those chemicals.
So in the context of avoiding environmental toxins and triggers, this is
a really good first step. And once you make this, you could start doing
other fun things like shampoos, and you can make your own lotions and
potions and all the great moisturizers and things that we recommend,
and we’re going to talk about as well. So I guess put in the essential oils,
and this is the immune-boosting blend.
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Sabrina: Yes. So we’re going to put 10 drops in. Here we go.
Dr. Zielinski: That wasn’t 10.
Sabrina: I thought I counted 10.
Dr. Zielinski: I will tell you because you know why I know because
someone just watched, and they’re going to call us out on that. Guess
what? It’s okay. That happens so many times. That’s not 10. That’s 11.
Okay. It’s okay because--
Sabrina: You know, a side note on that, so when I made roller bottles,
at first, I was so rigid, and I’m like, only 30 drops. Well, I realized that it
depends on whether you’re dropping from when the bottle is full, or the
bottle is empty to the volume that you get, which is totally different. It is.
So if you do have an unscented hand soap, you want to use six to eight
drops for every one ounce of your unscented hand soap if you’re going
to go and do your own. With this particular recipe, we used 10 drops for
your foaming hand soap.
Dr. Zielinski: Awesome. And then what do you do? This is fun. Hey, this
is foaming. And you can make non-foaming, too, right?
Sabrina: You can make non-foaming.
Dr. Zielinski: This is the same thing, correct?
Sabrina: Yes.
Dr. Zielinski: It’s the same exact thing. You just don’t have the foam on
top.
Sabrina: Correct. You can do either. Now, you really do need to shake
it up. So if you are going to make a concentrate beforehand, just
remember before you put everything in to use it, you’re going to want to
make it homogenous. And then you’re going to pump it out, and doesn’t
that look just like what you’re used to. Okay.
Dr. Zielinski: Awesome. Oh, man. And the aroma. Here’s the thing you
all, enjoy this. It’s like this is aromatherapy. And this is the beauty of
what we do. Keep your hands clean with this stuff. This will help you
avoid those environmental toxins and triggers that you get from the
antibacterial stuff that most people get at the stores. And this is just our
little tip of how we stay healthy, happy, and clean at home.
Sabrina: Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Zielinski: You got that?
So when it comes to avoiding chronic disease, when it comes to helping
your skin regenerate and heal from eczema, psoriasis, and essentially
unexplained symptoms that a lot of people don’t even realize where
they’re coming from, the doctors don’t know, mold needs to be the
number one thought. Mold needs to be the number one culprit.
A lot of people have black mold in their home. Some people just deal
with the molds that are around and the fungus in their bathrooms.
That’s why we’re going to cover a non-toxic bathroom cleaner that’s rich
in fungal fighting—tea tree essential oil.
But it’s also in the context of what is in your bathroom cleaner? And we
hope that it’s not filled with chemicals that we know will hurt the skin
microbiome that will cause systemic inflammation and puts you at a
greater risk for eczema, psoriasis, and a variety of chronic conditions
that we cover in The Essential Oils Apothecary.
So we dealt with black mold. And this was a big deal for us. And maybe
we could talk a little bit about that because this is part of it. This is part
of the cleaning of the black mold, but when it comes to avoiding it and
actually healing from it, that’s a whole another story.
But we want to just paint the picture that it doesn’t matter. Really,
it doesn’t matter what you’re cleaning with. And we hope that it’s
something like this that we know works and we know will make you
actually feel better and not hurt you.
Sabrina: Absolutely. And another note, too, is even our outdoor toxins,
and we’re in an area that has a lot of molds outside, and that’s an area
we can’t control. So when we look at the places that we can control, the
house and our cleaners, and those things are one of them.
So making sure that we have good healthy cleaners and really detoxing
the areas of our home to make sure that we can clean safely. Because
we’ve all been around cleaners at some point in our life where we
breathed in, and it actually hurt our lungs. And so we can hurt ourselves,
or we can actually help our bodies heal depending on what we use.
[30:00]
Dr. Zielinski: Yeah. And this is something, by the way, you won’t have
to wear-- I remember my mom used to make me wear those yellow or
purple gloves that go up to your-- like, just think about that. Just think for
a moment. You shouldn’t have to wear gloves, rubber gloves up to your
elbows to clean with. And I’ll never forget having dishpan hands. Like my
hands, especially in the wintertime, cracked and just hurting.
Sabrina: And if that’s on us and we’re using gloves, let’s say you were
washing your floor and using those gloves. What about our pets? What
about our kids? Me being a nursing mom, all of those things we’re taking
in and putting out. So we want to make sure that what we’re doing is
harmonious all around us and we’re helping bring life to our family and
our household.
Dr. Zielinski: It’s one of the number one things you could do for your
skin health, which ultimately helps your entire body health because
don’t forget, and I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but it’s
super important for us to remember our skin is the first layer, the first
defense mechanism for our immunity.
And so, if your skin is not properly intact, you’re going to put yourself
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at a greater risk for all sorts of chronic diseases. And Alzheimer’s is one
of them, heart disease, COPD. It all contributes to one another, even
cancer.
So this is a lifestyle. It’s essentially chronic disease-free. It’s a chronic
disease-preventing. It’s an abundant life, abundant living lifestyle. And
we want your hands to feel moisturized after using certain cleaners.
So without belaboring the point, what is your wonderful fungal mildew
fighting bathroom cleaner?
Sabrina: Yes. So we have our tea tree, citrus bathroom cleaner. All right.
So what we’re going to do is we’re going to take two tablespoons of
Castile soap. This is the one that I use. I really like the unscented baby of
Dr. Bronner’s. We’re going to put that in our container. It’s our 16-ounce
container there. We’re also going to put two tablespoons of baking soda.
What I found is if you do the baking soda first, it’s more stuck at
the bottom. So this actually will help when it goes to make it more
homogenous. Just so that we could get the essential oils all set for you,
we did 25 drops of tea tree, and you can use lemon or orange.
Orange just happens to be my favorite, or you could go half and half if
you wanted, but 30 drops of your citrus. So we use 30 drops of orange in
here. Wonderful. Now it’s time to get out our two cups of distilled water.
We’re going to add that in here. And it’s going to slowly go down.
Dr. Zielinski: And again, let me test you. Why do we use distilled water?
Sabrina: Because of-- oh, no. Hold on. It got stuck.
Dr. Zielinski: Hey, this is real life. This happens.
Sabrina: So what happens when it gets stuck and it will, you can use a
chopstick.
Dr. Zielinski: What got stuck? Baking soda?
Sabrina: The baking soda. You can use a chopstick, or you can use this.
This is actually one of the reasons why I got this particular one. And what
will happen is it’s all going to be homogenous in the end. There we go,
once you get there.
And actually, once you put all of the water in, you want to actually take
your rubber scraper and get anything lastly that’s there. If you don’t use
all of it because we have a few other ingredients in front of it--
Dr. Zielinski: We are flowing here. We got bubbles.
Sabrina: I know. You will get bubbles because we have that reaction
there, and it’s okay. You don’t have to use all of the water. That’s fine.
Dr. Zielinski: If possible, again, you could get it for a dollar, you all. A
dollar for a gallon of distilled water at any store. You want to always
try to get distilled water when it comes to any of your water-based
preparations because that will help it last longer because it’s antiseptic.
But when you’re using tap water, even if it might be filtered, by the time
it gets through the pipes, you’re still going to get a little bacteria that
might end up causing this to go rancid quicker. As a reminder, these
aqueous solutions typically last about a month.
And even though you might not smell like it’s going bad, you have to
assume because we’ve known, we’ve consulted with our dear friends
who are cosmetic formulators and product formulators that you have
roughly a one-month shelf life. It’s not worth it when it comes to any
water-based solution because these have no preservatives.
That’s really the difference. And that’s why this is much healthier than
the things that we get; oftentimes, people get at the stores because
they’re rich in chemical surfactants and chemical preservatives that
cause the shelf life and this life to last for years, but at what cost?
So with that said, make an amount that you’re comfortable with that
you could use within a month’s period of time. And so if you don’t think
maybe you don’t have seven people in your home like we do, and you
don’t bathe as much as we do, maybe cut the recipe in half, and that will
last you or cut it in one quarter. But the ratio is still the same.
Sabrina: Absolutely. Now you’re still going to have some bubbles there
at the top. You can wait for those to completely go down. But anytime
you’re going to add more water, you are going to have more bubbles,
and because we are going to shake it just to make sure that we’re
homogenous. So as you can see, we are getting there. We’re not there
yet, but you’re going to shake it up. So you want to make sure you shake
it. All right. I think we’re good.
Dr. Zielinski: You aren’t going to squirt me, are you?.
Sabrina: No, I promise.
Dr. Zielinski: Don’t. I only got one shirt. You know what happened?
Because I know this is really funny. We did like a matcha green tea
demo. It was horrible. I forgot to put the lid on the blender.
Sabrina: You should have seen the counters and everything. It was a
mess. The cabinets were covered. The one cool thing was that he had
the exact same shirt.
Dr. Zielinski: I only got one of these shirts, though.
Sabrina: He accidentally ordered two of the same shirt. So all he
did is go up while I’m cleaning everything. Okay. And then he comes
back down, and he does the second one like nothing ever happened,
although we had still like green speckles all over so many areas.
Dr. Zielinski: So don’t spray me. I love you.
Sabrina: Yes. Okay. So a lot of the sprayer bottles have a couple of
different options. This is more of a straight shot. This is better for like in
the tub. And then you’ve got your spray, which is better for the sink.
I would say the long stream is better for the toilet, but you can use this
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on the tub. You can use this on the floor. You can use this in the toilet.
You can use this in a variety of places and just go ahead and clean that.
You can use a microfiber towel, a silver towel, lots of different options
there.
I really like the microfiber towels for those kinds of surfaces. But
remember, if you are going to clean, and this actually happened to me,
if you’re going to clean in the bathroom, make sure you start and use
certain clothes for certain places.
So you don’t want to clean the toilet and then go ahead and clean the
floor or clean the shower. You really want to work your way down and
finish last with the toilet. Yeah.
Dr. Zielinski: Perfect.
Sabrina: That actually happened to me in a hospital setting, and I got an
infection from that. So you really want to be careful.
Dr. Zielinski: Meaning the people cleaning in the hospital-- because
our baby Elijah had very high levels of bilirubin, so he was jaundiced. So
he was in this little Billy bed, and they were in the situation Mama Z is
nursing and--
Sabrina: So this is day two. She goes in there. She cleans the floor. Then
she cleaned the toilet, and then she cleaned the seat of the toilet and
then the sink with the same rag. And my grandma was a nurse, and she
was very specific. My mom being a home economics major, all of them
very specific on where to clean.
So think of those places when you’re cleaning. And if it’s too much to
remember, just use a different rag for the different things. Or use a
paper towel for the different places. That way, you don’t have to worry
about cross-contamination.
Dr. Zielinski: Yeah. That’s a big deal. These are antibacterial, antifungal.
Some have a slight antiviral component to these. And so when it comes
to your countertops, when it comes to your cleaners, especially with
the baking soda. It adds a little more of a-- I don’t want to say abrasive,
but any little quick tips about your-- what’s it called that we use with our
Oxy-Boost and we clean between like in the shower, the grout?
Sabrina: Oh, absolutely. Use your old toothbrushes. Use those old
toothbrushes. Don’t throw them out. When you go to throw your
toothbrush that you’re using out now, just replace the one that you
have.
So I have one under each of the sinks. So in the laundry room, under
each of the bathroom sinks, and under each of the kitchen sinks making
sure that you have an abrasive little tool so you can get in all of those
little deep crevices because that’s always the problem.
When you’re trying to clean your stove, you need to have a good tool to
get in there. Now, you can always use a toothpick in other areas. And I
think it’s Pampered Chef that has-- I have one of those tools where it has
like a pick at the end of one and the toothbrushy one at the top, but you
want to have an area that you can get into different places.
The other important thing with any of your cleaners is to make sure
that you label them. So I make sure that I use my label maker, and I
put it right on there. So it’ll say glass. It’ll say bathroom. It’ll say granite.
Whatever you’re cleaning, have your heavy-duty one. Mark it because
you want to know what you’re using.
Also, if you’re in an area where your kids are going to be doing a majority
of the cleaning, or if you’re training them to do a majority of the cleaning
like we do, and in the bathroom, that’s the time when I’m going to use
a plastic bottle versus the glass. I have broke many glass bottles, but in
there I really let them--
[40:00]
They know the cleaners are there. They know that all of those are safe.
And I have a couple of sons. I’m not mentioning their names that like to
get toothpaste all over the mirror. And I have a sweet little darling that
gets her handprints all over another mirror. So they know exactly where
to go to get those supplies. And usually, and typically, I’m having them
go back over that area just to make sure that it’s nice and clean. So make
it easy for yourself.
Dr. Zielinski: You make a good point is that whenever you use essential
oils, by default and the rule of thumb, you always want to have a glass
container, ideally. But to an extent, this is heavily diluted. So it’s not
necessarily going to corrode, but we will tell you, though. If it’s in a
cheaper plastic, then you might find that it will corrode the plastic.
And the concern is that especially the more essential oils, like if you
want double the strength, you’ve got to be really careful because the
petrochemicals from the plastic can leach into your mixture. And you
don’t want that. I mean, you’re basically now toxifying your non-toxic
solution. So glass is first and foremost.
You could get PET, P-E-T plastic, or they now have some really good
options. Non-biodegradable like heavy-duty medicinal grade plastic that
you could get spray bottles if you’re using something again that you
have children or you are concerned. But ideally, though, glass always,
especially when it comes to the citrus oils because they will wreak havoc
on your plastic the more the concentration is.
Sabrina: And a side note about that. If like us, we had holes drilled
into the granite to make sure that we had pumps for our healthy
hand sanitizer, soap, oil, lotion, all of those things. Because we do use
essential oils, we are using some of those I call them murkier essential
oils like your myrrh, your frankincense, your clove, they are going to
break more things down over time. And so we’ve had to replace a few
more of our bottles underneath the sink more often.
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So you always want to keep your eye on all of those because, over time,
those things are going to wear out, but this is an amazing way to clean
your bathroom here and to make sure you keep your products that you
use not just on surfaces but on your hands and on your body healthy.
And of course--
Dr. Zielinski: Point it away from people. And what is your little tip
because sometimes, you could get some of the baking soda gums up in
the little mechanism? So what’s your tip also, an alternative to what we
just showed you?
Sabrina: Sometimes it’s just easier to pour all your ingredients in the
bowl, stir it, pour it in, do it over the sink because you are going to have
run out. And so you can pour it in until all of the bubbles go unless you
want to wait for the bubbles to knock down and then pour more in. You
can do it either way, and it’ll be fine. All right. So, now it’s your turn to
clean. Look, I got a smile out of him on that one.
Dr. Zielinski: That’s our antifungal bathroom cleaner.
SHOULD YOU BE COUNTING
CHEMICALS?
Guest: Aimee Carlson and Naomi Damask
Aimee: Hello, everyone. We are so grateful and honored to be a part of

The Eczema, Psoriasis, and Skin Disease Masterclass. We want to really
thank The Stern Method with Ryan and Teddy, and also The Natural
Living Family with Doctor Z and mama Z for putting this together to
bless so many people’s lives. We have got some fantastic information
to share with you, and we’re going to be popping back and forth with
the presentations because some of the information, the visual is just so
good, right Naomi?
Naomi: It is, Aimee, and I want them to be able to soak it all up.
Aimee: Soak it all up because there’s a lot of information. First of all,
my name is Aimee Carlson. I am known as the toxin terminator, I’m a
podcast host, best-selling author, and also a certified toxicity and detox
specialist. And my co-host today is …
Naomi: I am Naomi Damask. I’m a wellness entrepreneur. I’m known
as the breast cancer thriver. I’m a holistic wellness coach and I am just
thrilled that we get to speak to you guys and pour into you. So you guys
get those notepads out to take some good notes.
Aimee: I love it. It’s amazing. We like to bring the value and this is no
exception to the real today. Let’s talk about, should we be counting
chemicals instead of calories? That’s really what we’re going to discuss
with you today. We’re going to cover the leading cause of inflammation
and disease in the body today. We’re going to show you how
inflammation is attributing to skin disease. What the bucket analogy
looks like. If you haven’t heard of it, you’re going to. The symptoms of
toxic overload and how they appear in our body.
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After this presentation, you’re going to be able to identify the top toxins.
You’re going to know the detoxification pathways and how to support
each and every one of them. You’re going to know how to support the
immune system, how to fix the cells and reduce the inflammation. Guys,
that is key. And you’re going to know how to develop healthy daily habits
that are going to reduce your skin disease flare triggers. Are you excited?
I’m excited.
Naomi: I’m very excited, Aimee.
Aimee: So toxins are the leading cause to chronic disease and
inflammation in our body. It is the root of all things. Skin disease is
absolutely no exception to this rule. In all cases of skin diseases, I was
doing my research to present to you today, I found an underlying cause
of immune system dysfunction. Also, a genetic predisposition and/or
reactions to toxins as being the big contributors to skin disease.
Today, there are several forms of eczema and psoriasis that are out
there and skin disease numbers are ranked as the fourth most common
reason that people go to the doctor. However, excuse me, the fourth
most common cause of human illness, but there’s a lot of people that
don’t go to the doctor because of it. Boy. And I know you’re going to hear
so much more about this from the other presenters, but I want to take a
look at a few of the statistics. When we teach, Naomi and I, we know that
it’s super important to know the why. Why do we want to know this? In
order to make a change.
Naomi: It’s super important, Aimee, to know that why. The five why
questions, so yes.
Aimee: It is important. So let’s take a look at some of the statistics. And
I’m going to share the screen again real quick with you all. Here’s the big
thing that I discovered when looking at psoriasis, is the correlation of co-
morbidities to the very high escalation of psoriasis in the body. In fact,
there was a recent prospective study done that indicated that obesity
and high abdominal fat mass doubled your risk of developing psoriasis.
There’s about two to three percent of the population that are affected
by psoriasis. That’s 125 million people worldwide. These numbers are
absolutely staggering.
And then let’s look at eczema. There’s 31.6 million people in the US that
have some form of eczema. It’s usually associated with early childhood
development. And I want to factor in this because this is important to
pay attention to when it’s a childhood disease and that they outgrow it.
Here’s what’s interesting that I found, was that children born outside of
the US have a 50% lower risk of developing atopic dermatitis or eczema.
After they’ve lived in the United States, that increases in just 10 years.
Those numbers are crazy to me and there’s a reason for this. And
when we get into talking about toxins, you’re going to understand why
I brought this to light. The next thing that we want to talk about is the
immune system, because while toxins in our environment might not be
necessarily triggering your response to a skin disease, they are affecting
your immune system. The accumulation of toxins within the body cause
endocrine disruption and inflammatory dysregulation. This is big. This
alters the chemical messengers inside your body that it relies on for
proper immune function.
When I did my research and finding that a lot of the underlying causes
is a dysregulation in the immune system, we’ve got to look at what’s
causing that dysregulation in the immune system. You can have external
toxins like chemical exposures, or you can have internal toxins like
Candida, and an imbalance of gut bacteria. Toxins cause a chronic low
grade inflammation in the body and the cell membranes. Environmental
toxins shrink the thymus. That’s that little green dot in the screen there
behind the lungs. This is where the immune cells go to mature and grow
up. Because that thymus is getting reduced in size, it’s shrinking, we see
a diminished production of T regulatory cells, which help us regulate
that immune system.
Naomi: So basically the simple truth is that we are living in a sea of
toxins and it’s destroying our bodies. Toxins are everywhere. In fact, they
are greater now than they have ever been in our history. So since World
War II, over 86 chemicals have been developed each year. I’m going
to repeat that number again because that is a huge number, 86,000
chemicals.
Aimee: I was going to say it’s 86,000.
Naomi: Yeah, have been adding and this list is continuing to grow and
grow yet only 200 of those have ever been studied for neurotoxicity. And
most agencies only test these chemicals for short-term use. And they
have never been tested long-term or multiple chemicals at once. Now, I
know before being diagnosed with breast cancer and before becoming
a holistic health coach, I actually used to work in the beauty industry. I
worked for one of the top cosmetic companies in the world. And that
was really eye-opening when I started my own health journey to really
dive in to learn more about this.
Do you remember how, Aimee, had pointed out that, we talked about
how children, once they lived in the US have actually developed more of
skin issues? And the reason being is, there’s a reason for that. Because
of all these agencies, the US takes a stance that let’s prove it harmful
before we’re proving it safe.
Aimee: Yeah. This is what fired me up when I started on my own health
journey, was realizing that there are things allowed to be sold in our
stores today that are absolutely cancer causing. They’re causing issues
with our body. They’re endocrine-disrupting and our government is
doing nothing to protect us from those ingredients. So this is why it’s so
important to be taking a look at this information.
Naomi: And exactly, Aimee, because in the EU, there’s is it 13,000 or
1300 chemicals that are already banned and in the US there’s under 20.
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Aimee: European nations is 1300 chemicals have actually been banned
for use in cosmetics. And here in the United States is under 20. I believe
the number the last time I checked was 11. 11 of the ingredients banned
here in the United States. So the United States is well behind. And if
you’re listening and watching this in another nation, kudos to you my
friend for having a government that has absolute watching out for your
overall health.
[10:00]
Naomi: So Aimee and I like to talk about the overflowing bucket. What
does that really mean? So visualize a bucket and now visualize if you had
a faucet going and you’re turning it on and all of a sudden it starts to
overflow. Well, I know for a fact, after I went through my own diagnosis,
I really started looking back at my own life and my own exposures to
things and what happens when we’re overly exposed to things.
You see, it’s not just ever one experience, one toxin, one chemical
that has caused these diseases or symptoms, it’s cumulative. And it’s
happening over our lifetime you guys. It’s not just a one day approach.
So you are exposed to bacteria when you’re born, vaccination
ingredients as a child, especially if you grew up in America with a SAD
diet, which is a standard American diet. As a child, you think about it, we
got fluoride on our teeth. We’ve had fillings put into our teeth, especially
if you’re our age. You probably have some silver in your mouth. Perhaps
you maybe have had your wisdom teeth pulled out or root canals. You’re
using products daily that have ingredients been known to cause cancer,
inflammation, and endocrine disrupting.
You’re drinking water that’s laden with pesticides and heavy metals.
So eventually guess what, that bucket is going to overflow and seep
everywhere. So we can dive into our personal care cleaning products.
Our dental, as we just mentioned right there, it’s everywhere around us.
It’s just that constant drip, drip, drip.
Aimee: Yeah. And that’s how it happens. We don’t get to ill health just
overnight at a drop of a hat. It happens in a long-term.
Naomi: And I love this quote that says, “If you listen to your body when
it whispers, you won’t have to hear it scream.” Seriously, Aimee, is that
not a powerful quote? And my question for you guys, are you guys really
listening? Do you even know how to listen to your body? If we started
to learn to pay attention to it, if we start to learn to be educated about
the pain and also that forgetfulness, that lack of energy, all these things,
insomnia. Sometimes we feel so bad, we don’t even know what feeling
good looks like anymore. And we have to listen and lean into those
whispers.
Aimee: Absolutely. And our body is constantly sending us messages. So
here, we’re going to share the screen again and show you some of the
symptoms of overload, of that bucket overflowing. So you can read this
on and I’m going to explain a few things to you. Because here’s the thing,
our body does whisper to us first, and then it’s going to nudge us, and
then it’s going to knock us down if we’re not paying attention. So some
of the very first signs that we’ve got toxic overload happening inside of
our body is a change in body odor. So if you notice a change in what
your breath smells like, your sweat smells like, maybe it’s your urine or
your feces. That is some of the very first signs that we’ve got some toxic
buildup happening in our body and we need to take a look.
Now, if we’re not paying attention, because we don’t know what those
symptoms and messages are, then we’re going to see more of these
things that you’re seeing on the screen right now. Weight gain, food
allergies, depression, anxiety, all those digestive issues that start
happening. That’s that nudge, that saying, “Hey, this is really pounding
on the door at us.” And saying, “You need to pay attention. We’ve got
some stuff happening inside the body.” And if we still don’t listen then,
then that’s where we develop the autoimmune diseases. We develop the
cancers, the strokes, the heart disease, the diabetes, all those chronic
diseases. That’s when those start developing.
Naomi: And, Aimee, I know for myself, my body was waving the flag and
it kept, first of all, did the little tap, tap, tap. Then it got a little bit louder.
And then it finally was waving the flag. And then I was down for the
count.
Aimee: Yeah. And so many people don’t know. I had no idea that these
were messages being sent to me. I didn’t, and that’s why we show you
these things. And we talk you through that series of what that looks like
because when you know better, you can do better.
Naomi: Yes. And one of the questions I always received right away
when I got diagnosed with breast cancer was, does it run in your family?
And I’m here to tell you most diseases and illnesses are not genetic. We
might be predispositioned for a particular disease, but we all have a set
of genes. It is what is causing that to turn on that switch, that trigger.
It’s really what is tripping that, that light switch to go on. So we can turn
these genes on, we can also turn them off and that’s what’s so powerful.
Just the fact that we know we can actually dim those lights again.
The Human Microbiome Project said that we can change gene
expressions when we successfully clean or fix the cell. Meaning we can
turn those genes off, which I know for myself when I learned this, it
was like I could breathe again. Because being a mom of two kids, I was
concerned, am I going to pass this on? Are they going to have to live
with this fear like I first did until I educated myself and really understood
that the root cause of so many things is our lifestyle and environmental,
which is toxins.
Aimee: Toxins are it. Here we go.
Naomi: Yeah. So let’s dig into what are the top toxins. So when it comes
to skin disease, there’s definitely toxins that we want to avoid. And
there’s top ones we want to concentrate on. So they’re heavy metals,
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there’s mold, there’s hidden infections, and then just the general
toxicities. And while we know that not all the toxins are skin irritants,
what they do is it compromise our immune system. And this is one
major reason why we need to look at this.
Aimee: And listen, we understand we talked about that toxic soup. It’s
a sea of toxins out and around us and we don’t want to overwhelm you.
So we’re breaking it down to just a few that you can really concentrate
on that are going to make a difference for you. So when it comes to
heavy metals, what I found in my research was cadmium was at the root
of a lot of skin disease issues when it comes to heavy metal.
There was a scientific report done that showed many people with severe
psoriasis have high levels of cadmium in their blood. This study followed
over 6,000 participants for three years and found a direct correlation to
the severity of their psoriasis and the amount of cadmium they had in
their blood. The things to know about cadmium is that it has a half-life
of 10 years, meaning it is going to be in your body for 10 years affecting
your respiratory and your digestive tracks. Cadmium interferes with zinc
absorption, which is crucial for healthy skin.
Cadmium is produced in mining and metal processing operations when
burning fuels and making or using phosphate fertilizers and the disposal
of metal products. Our car exhaust can produce cadmium and smoking
is a large production of cadmium. We can also find cadmium in foods,
especially grains, potatoes and leafy vegetables, shellfish, and organ
meats. We can also find it in very soft water and ceramic wear. I like to
be able to point out what it is and where we find it. And then we’ve got
another one, Naomi. I’m going to share a screen because it’s going to be
really important for you guys to see the information on this one.
Naomi: So another one that we were talking about toxins is mold. Mold
be the cause for many unexplained illnesses. I always say this is sort of
like that secret thing that people don’t realize and a lot of times doctors
are not looking for is mold. And it’s because it’s multiple chemical
sensitivities. So people that have chemical sensitivities, that have maybe
fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, depression, it’s the bio-toxins from mold
that are even more toxic than heavy metals. So mold can just come from
water. It’s not just from water damaged buildings. I think a lot of times,
that’s what we think about when we think about mold or the mold in
your shower. But it can come from many food sources.
I know for me, this was eye-opening when I learned about this. And it
can come from your condiments. A big one is coffee. And I mean, how
many people drink coffee every single day? It’s not in just the coffee, but
even your coffee maker. Fruit, juices, processed meats. These are just
some of the things.
[20:00]
And then you look at these grains, the corn, the alcohol, peanuts. That’s
another big one. I just want people to realize that these are those
hidden toxins that are in food that we probably didn’t realize that were
there. And these are also causing symptoms like why we can’t lose
weight as well.
Aimee: Absolutely. And some of the food sources were really eye-
opening to me because I was like you. Mold, that’s the wet, the flood
damage, water damage, buildings, not anything else. Hidden infections
we talked about is another one of those top toxins. And one of the
things that really can affect skin disease is Candida and yeast infections
inside the body. And so we want to really watch that and pay attention
to do we have these infections happening in our body? Do we have a
gut bacteria imbalance going on inside of our body? And that’s making a
difference in our triggers to our skin conditions.
Also, we need to make sure that we’re looking at oral health. Naomi
has talked about root canals and having teeth extractions when we’re
younger or older. The thing with hidden infections, is many times this
can sit and fester inside the body and take 10 to 20 years for symptoms
to actually develop for us.
So if you’ve removed your hand from the fire of all these toxins and
you’re still having issues, you might want to take a look at your oral
health or your gut bacteria and how that balance is there. The other last
one, and I’m going to share the screen again one more time, because
I really pulled up a lot of products or ingredients within our products.
Because when it comes to general toxicities, we have to be looking at
what do we use every day?
And what I’m looking at here is cleaning products. I’m looking at
personal care products; shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, those types of
things. So you can read this list and you can screenshot that, but these
specific are skin irritants. So if we’re living with a skin disease, these are
ingredients we absolutely do not want to have in our products because
they are causing additional skin irritation.
The other thing that I want to point out is when we talk about acids,
you want to look for things like alpha [diroxy], glycolic acid, and lactic
acid. When we’re looking at sulfates, it can be hidden as sodium C14 or
sodium C16, sodium laureth sulfate. Sometimes it’s just labeled SLS. It
can be also labeled as TEA. These are surfactants, and these are actually
used by scientists to irritate the skin. So extremely important that we
want to avoid those.
I’m posting a picture of the Think Dirty App. And there’s a reason for
that, because in the Think Dirty App, we can actually download this free
app. We can type in a product and it will give us a safety rating from
one to 10, one being extremely safe, 10 being very dangerous. And we
can actually then decide, is this something that we want to have in our
home or not? Now, for me, it has to have a rating of three or lower to be
allowed inside our home.
But the most important part of this app that I really like is that it’s telling
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me why. Why does this product get the rating that it gets so that I can
start learning? Because boy, sometimes we really got to be a scientist
to understand those labels. And this is the tool that really helped me in
the beginning of my journey to understand that list of ingredients that I
wanted to avoid.
Naomi: And, Aimee, it’s so easy to use it because all you have to do
is if you have the app on your phone is scan that item. So if you’re at
the store and you’re not sure, and you can’t remember all these fancy
words, you literally just scan it and it will tell you. And if for some
reason that product is not in there, I highly recommend adding it to the
database and they will research it. And then they send you a message
back saying, “Hey, remember that product you scanned in, we’ve found
some more information.”
Aimee: I love that.
Naomi: So that really is beneficial. So we want to talk to you about the
five steps to healthier you. This is what Aimee and I, we have developed
a boot camp. We really talk a lot about this in our boot camp. And I
think it’s really important that we found these five steps to really get to
the root of cellular health. And that is where we want you guys to go is
to those little cells. We’re made up of what is it, 37 trillion cells in our
body. It’s unbelievable number. And really, it has to do with how are we
detoxing at the cellular level? How are we supporting the body? What
can we do to fix the cells so the body can get well?
There are five Rs that we like to refer to in our boot camp. And that’s
called, first of all, we’re going to remove that source. Remove your hand
from that fire where you are going to regenerate the cell. This is really
important when we start to talk about this. Restore cellular energy, I
mean, who doesn’t want to have more energy these days? We also then
want to reduce cellular inflammation. We hear about inflammation all
the time, and there’s a reason why we want to reduce it at the cell level.
And then we want to reestablish methylation. These five steps are key to
a healthier you.
Aimee: We feel like this is where sometimes the ball gets dropped with a
lot of things. You hear about detoxes and cleanse and that’s happening
downstream. What we teach is upstream. And it’s actually getting to the
cell where, because when the cell membrane is the cell has this wall, it’s
the gatekeeper of the cell. It’s what allows things to come in and go out.
And when we are bombarded with toxins, that cell wall becomes
inflamed and rigid. So nothing’s going in, nothing’s going out as well as
the tiny little receptors on the outside of that cell wall, they’re not getting
their messages back and forth. And this is where we get the skin issues.
We get the insulin resistance, the hormone resistance, the weight loss
resistance happening because our cell is damaged and the cell wall is
damaged.
We go through these five steps. There’s really three things that we can
do to make a difference and work ourselves through these five steps.
The five steps are kind of all interactive. It’s like an orchestra. You have
all those different, beautiful instruments playing to have this beautiful
sound and these five steps orchestrate together as well. You don’t really
necessarily do one and not the other. They all tie in with each other.
So we talked about taking your hand off the fire. That’s number one, is
get the toxins out. Stop bombarding the body and get the toxins out.
We’re not going to spend any more time there. But number two, we’re
going to share because we want to show you this pathway here guys.
Let me get to that screen for you, Naomi. Number two is to support the
detox pathway.
Naomi: Oh, and, Aimee, this is so important for us to understand. And
I encourage everyone take a screenshot of this because this is what we
need to know. We need to know that detox is not just a pill or a juice.
Detox is what our bodies are made to do. We have these detoxification
pathways. We like to refer to this as a drainage funnel. And like we know
that there is going to be teas, juices, different things. These are all good.
We’re not saying that’s not good, but there’s still not addressing the
issue. Like Aimee was talking about, this is addressing the downstream
of things. We need to get to the cellular level and begin to really focus on
these different levels.
So let’s talk about colon. What is it we can do to help the colon? First of
all, if you’re not having a bowel movement every single day, that’s where
we first need to address.
Aimee: My gosh, how many people, Naomi, have come to you and said,
“Oh yeah, I’m regular.” And so we start digging into that and we say,
“Well, how often are you having a bowel movement?” And I know who
wants to talk about poop, but we love talking about poop. They say, “A
couple times a week.” My friends, that’s not regular.
Naomi: No, that is not regular whatsoever. We want you to be going at
least once to three times a day, but also what’s really important is what
do those stools look like? So look up Bristol stool chart. That’s another
thing, you want to be number three or four on that chart, but what can
we actually do to help ourselves? It’s like with the colon, we need to be
eating more fiber. Right now we hear a lot about protein, but we’re really
missing out. Fiber is king and we need way more fiber in our diet.
And then also we need to be looking at our liver, bile, and our kidneys.
How can we support these? What are we doing? Are we drinking enough
water through the day? Are we sweating? Are we exercising? All of these
things are super important for our body. That’s why we hear people all
the time saying, “How are you eating? How are you exercising?
The lymphatic system. This is the area that I love talking about. It is our
sewer system in our body. This is where we’re going to start to take the
garbage out. But with this system, it’s not hooked up to an organ. So we
have to physically get the body to pump it, to move it through our body.
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[30:00]
So how can we do this? We can do it through a dry brushing,
rebounding. We can do it through sweating. We can do it through
saunas, hot-cold showers. Those are just some of the simple things.
Then they discovered a few years ago that actually the brain area has its
own lymphatic system, which is really powerful. And this is why sleep is
important because this is when our body starts to repair things. So once
again, making sure we’re well hydrated and having that water in the
morning is going to be really key for the glymphatic system.
Aimee: And that’s first thing in the morning too, Naomi. We teach our
clients, you know what, when stuff is right in front of us, that’s how we’re
going to use it and make sure that we’re doing things. So in order to get
yourself drinking eight ounces of water first thing in the morning, take it
to bed with you. Put it on your bedside table or put it in your bathroom.
And then that will trigger you to make sure that you’re drinking that
water first thing. That’s just a little tip from both of us.
Naomi: And then the last area is the cells and the tissues. What we were
talking before, we have to reduce the inflammation. We also have to
learn to use some binders, to pull stuff out, to pull those toxins out of
our bodies. So it’s just all these things. And like Aimee said, we can’t just
do one step and pick and choose and be like, “I’m just going to do this
one.” They all work together and we can’t overlook that.
Aimee: Absolutely. And when we get to the cell level as well, sometimes,
Naomi talked about a binder that especially like heavy metals, for
instance, they need to be bound to something in order to get out of
the body. So that’s really important to use something like that. And also
too, if we’re not getting all of the toxins out, we can get ourselves into
what’s called the detox crazies. We might feel worse than we feel better.
And we also like to give you tips and suggestions there. That first of all,
remember the bottom of the funnel, make sure you’re pooping every
day. If you’re not, don’t move on to the next steps.
But if you find that, maybe you have a headache or you have discomfort
in your digestive system, or you have some issues with your skin
because that is the largest organ of our body, slow it down. Drink more
water, take the activated charcoal, really help and support that body out.
So we talk about remove the toxins, support the detox pathways and
eat. Food is your medicine.
Now, there’s certain foods that you can eat that are going to support
the detoxification process of the body. There are foods that you can eat
that are going to support the methylation of your body, which is super
important to be able to get the toxins out, as we have to be methylating
properly. And then also there’s foods that we can eat to ensure that
we’re producing glutathione and mitochondria in the body, right Naomi?
Naomi: Yes. Those are two big words that we probably all learned in
eighth grade that we never thought we’d have to know again, but those
are really important to be eating and supporting our body with foods.
And it really goes back to, people ask this all the time, “Well, what diet
should I be on?” My answer is a real food diet, literally eating whole food.
That should be your diet.
Aimee: I love that. Here’s the simple answer, is it God made or
manmade? Ask yourself that simple question when you’re picking up
your food. Is this God made or manmade and that’ll help you get your
answers on whether to put it in that cart or not. Having the whole foods,
eliminating some of the inflammatory foods out of our diet; sugars,
alcohol, those types of things, eating really good healthy fats, lots of
fiber, lots of protein inside the body.
But then there’s also a way to eat that too that we teach about with the
diet variation plan that incorporates intermittent fasting and fasting, as
well as low days where we carb load or protein load. But there’s a very
specific way that’s really going to help get down to that cellular level of
detox and help our body get everything out.
Naomi: That’s all important, Aimee. And I always like to say, “Eat how
your great grandparents ate and you won’t have a problem.” Because
that’s simple when you stop and think about how did they eat.
Aimee: So here’s the thing, if you take your hand off the fire, if you
support the detox pathways, if you eat to actually heal the cell, Naomi,
what happens?
Naomi: You have the ability to turn down those genes or turn up the
good survival genes. It is that light switch effect that we talked about
before. And that is what we want you guys to get, is how can we change
our gene expressions in a good way. That’s what we can do.
Aimee: Absolutely. So we want to leave you guys with just a few things.
I’m going to leave this screen up here for just a minute as we finish
up our conversation. You can find us at transformingwomenshealth.
com. That’s our website. If you have questions over the information
that we shared with you today, please email us at info@
transformingwomenshealth.com. And we have a gift for all of you. When
I started my journey way back when, and Naomi, know this was the start
of your journey as well. Why don’t you share your story about what your
doctor said when you said, “What do I need to focus on first?”
Naomi: You know what, Aimee, it was so interesting because I’ve seen
five oncologist and a lot of them really didn’t have a lot of solutions for
me or answers. They did say the number one thing I needed to look at
was cellular health, meaning cellular stress and addressing that which is
a term called oxidative stress. And I had never heard about that, but it
sent me down the rabbit hole of learning.
And when I asked him, “Well, what is the solution?” He basically said,
“Don’t get stressed, eat more broccoli and broccoli sprouts and practice
yoga.” And he was like, “That’s all I’ve got for you.” Because so many
times, a doctor would like to give you a pill for a first of all a researcher.
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And that was actually the best advice because I started to learn about
our bodies and how we can actually heal from a cellular level.
Aimee: I love that. And so what I want to also share with you guys, and
I’ll go back into the share screen here, is the one last thing that we’re
showing up here is the bit.ly/twhblacklist that’s transforming women’s
health blacklists. It’s bit.ly/twhblacklist. This is our free guide for you
that walks you room by room, through your house, in the kitchen, in the
laundry room and in the bathroom. And I believe we have the bedroom
in there as well.
So those four rooms of your house, and what are those ingredients that
are on that blacklist. You should absolutely not have these inside of your
home at all. So if you want that, just go to bit.ly/twhblacklist and you can
download that PDF or eBook absolutely free. That’s our gift to you to
help you start identifying how to take your hand off the fire.
Naomi: Well, it has been my absolute pleasure to co-host this today
with Aimee. We hope you guys got a lot of value out of this. We’d love to
be able to connect with you and answer any additional questions and
please enjoy all the speakers because there’s a lot of great ones.
Aimee: Amazing. Thank you so much.
3 SKIN SYSTEM SECRETS
Guest: Marisol Teijeiro, ND
Dr. Teijeiro: Hello, everybody. So excited to be here with you today.

We are going to be spending some personal time together, how
amazing, and speaking about the three skin system secrets and how
castor oil packs can help you achieve your dreams when it comes to
your skin. Very exciting. So let’s get started and work our way into the
presentation. Skin is for many people, such a major challenge when it
comes to their healthcare and trying to figure out how to make it better
especially when skin is just so visible can be incredibly challenging.
So castor oil packs are a tool that are not another supplement, but what
they are is a superstar system for things like eczema, psoriasis, rosacea,
and many other skin conditions. Because truly it’s a supplement-free,
ancient made new natural health ritual that truly transforms who you
are into who you want to be. And I know this for a fact because I didn’t
believe in them and many people don’t believe about these castor oil
packs until they try it. And that was my case and I’m sure it will be yours
as well too. Because once you do try it, you love it. You’ll never give it up.
And in fact, you end up just sharing it with all your friends because you
love it so much. And just take a peek here at the beautiful testimonies
that our clients have reported benefits with regards to their skin. “My
skin looks so amazing. Overall improvement in my skin appearance. I’m
using it for all different types of skin conditions and problems, eczema,
skin inflammations.” So just a great tool when it comes to skin, but it
doesn’t only deal with skin. It also deals with all the other symptoms and
problems that may be an issue as well. So very cool.
So to start our presentation, let’s just relax. Let’s forget all of our worries,
calm down, breathe with me. And let me ask you, would you love to look
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at your skin condition or your child’s not like a stain, but like a sign? A
love letter from your body telling you exactly what it is that you need.
Not the Scarlet letter, showing everyone around you how imperfect you
truly are. Because let’s face it, your skin has other ideas. And why does
your skin have such a mind of its own?
Honestly, it doesn’t follow the rules, and if you look at this picture here,
you’ll see here’s a patient of mine who was treated in June of 2016.
And fast forward September 27 , just a few months later, and for many
th
naive viewers of skin, this can look like an aggravation. It looks like an
aggravation, but from someone who knows how skin responds and how
it reacts, this to me actually is a movement forward. So that’s something
with skin that’s very important to know because it doesn’t heal the way
that you expect it to.
And because it is the biggest organ, the skin problems are everywhere in
the ears, at the nape of the neck, where the connection between the hair
and the skin lies on the face, in the groin area, underneath the breasts,
legs, everywhere. It goes all over the body. Because the skin, it’s the
most amount of real estate in our body, like the gut. In fact, the skin it’s
a lot like the gut. And it has to defend from invaders, it has to protect the
walls. Where the skin is the outside of our bodies, the gut my friends is
the outside, but that’s the outside that is within our inside.
So it’s a little bit different because where the outside is exposed to
everything on the outside and it’s already more protected, less fragile.
The gut is more fragile because obviously it’s on our insides. However,
the gut is dealing with the same kind of insults and stimulus as the skin
is. And they even come from the same embryological tissue. And here’s
the thing, the skin and the gut they meet and wherever crossroads meet,
your insides and your outsides, big s**t my friends. Sorry to swear. Big
s**t happens here and that’s truth. And I go in depth about it in my
book.
Our poo is a big problem. And don’t let the name scare you off because
many of us find ourselves on a regular basis saying, “Oh, s**t.” And that
often can be actually a sign of you need to look deeper and see what is
the problem? Because here we go, it’s truth. With the skin and the gut
there is so much poo. And there’s poo and there’s also a lot of bacteria
that we house that is known as the microbiome. We may be very familiar
with this. Candida, E. coli, parasites, hydrogen, methane producing
bacteria, H. pylori, the list goes on and on.
Now the research goes on and on because they’re seeing all these issues
with the microbiome, not the microbiome only within the gut, but the
microbiome on the skin as well too. And how both microbiomes play a
role in skin conditions. Candida, you might have an internal condition
with candida, but then also on the outside as well too on your skin. And
interesting commonalities in nutrient deficiencies exist with people who
have skin disorders, especially things like B12 along with zinc. Because
they’re key in both gut, skin and even in your liver health.
So however your skin looks, guess what? The gut is going to look this
way too. Just the way it goes. And here’s a perfect example. So this is an
autoimmune reaction in the skin. Likely the gut isn’t doing so well either.
And you can just see how irritated this is and how painful this must be.
And also the distribution, how it is in the areas of where the lymphatic
system is. So skin my friends, is honestly a smoke signal trying to warn
you of what’s going on inside. Only it’s tricking you, putting all of your
attention on the outside and less on the inside.
After all, wasn’t it your doctor that said, “What you eat or put inside your
body has nothing to do with your skin?” I don’t believe that because that
to me, that my friends is confusing a little bit. And it’s a myth and we’re
going to dispel that today. I’m going to let you in on the castor oil liver
pack three skin system secrets. Because there’s so much back and forth
when it comes to skin. On Google, wherever you may be searching with
your practitioners, it’s hard to actually know what even to believe. And
most of it just doesn’t even make sense.
And if you’ve been dealing with skin conditions like allergic or seborrheic,
dermatitis, eczema, psoriasis, pityriasis, tinea, rosacea or any other
skin issue, this presentation is good for you especially if you find this.
Take a look at this research study. This research study says, “Psoriasis
and pityriasis versicolor two very different conditions: together, but
separate.” Confusing. You’re diagnosed with one thing and here it looks
like you got another. How could that be? Confusing.
So if you are tired of trying all the different supplements, potions, and
lotions for your skin with minimal results, you know it is true that what
happens on the inside and what you do while you’re inside affects the
outside. And if you didn’t know this, it’s okay too because we’re going to
learn about it today. You just want to wake up, look in the mirror and
have clean non-irritative skin, balanced hormones, less stress, great
digestion. You just want to sleep like a baby and have huge poops. You
should.
And the other handle comes here to. Maybe you’re a mom. You suffer
because you see and feel your child’s shame and disgust when they
look at themselves in the mirror because of their skin issues. What’s the
long-term stress effects of this for your kid’s self-esteem? And I know
what you’re feeling. You’re feeling like, what have I done wrong? It’s not
your fault. You would just want your child to wake up feeling like new
everyday too. You are in the right place my friends. Whether it’s you,
whether it’s your child. Today, we’re going to discuss what you guys are
missing.
And it really isn’t another supplement. You’ve been doing all the
supplements. What you need is a new system of support. And a
foundational system that is tried and true, has withstood the test of
time, in use since 4,000 BC. A system now easier than ever before.
One that people call their miracle wrap. A system that supports your
supplements, your diet, your stress levels, your lifestyle, synergizing and
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energizing all of the benefits. And that’s the castor oil liver pack. Which
truly is loved, but honestly only a few privileged ones know about it.
They’re awakened to it and its beneficial effects.
[10:00]
So it’s a small request. And one that you deserve, agreed? For you to
wake up feeling like new. Again, this is reality. This is what I’ve seen over
a decade in clinical practice with my patients. This is what we’re seeing
in the comments on our social platforms. “Changed my life.” “Wake up
feeling like new.” “Mini cure for all kinds of skin issues.” “Glowing skin.”
“I love my pack. I won’t live without it.” Pretty amazing. “Helping my
thyroid.” “Eczema miracle.” “In love, castor oil for beauty.” “I’m floored.”
So awesome.
I would love to bring you into the inner circle of those that love doing
their castor oil liver wrap. Would you love that? Of course, because
adopting a new practice that helps you to feel better, which is like a self-
care practice, just like yoga or meditation, but can be done at home.
The benefits are beyond just the physical. They’re also spiritual too. So
enough with all the suspense. Let’s get into what the castor oil pack is
and does and the three skin secrets. What are they?
Number one, why what you put onto your body matters and how quality
and real estate matters too. Secret number two, why your skin is the
last place to heal and how you can speed it up by healing the gut. Secret
number three, all your systems are involved, it’s hormones, it’s digestion,
it’s immune, nervous. It’s not just your skin. And that’s why it’s not just
a new skin supplement you need or skin treatment, you need a system.
Awesome.
So let me introduce myself, may I? Just a reminder, I’m not your doctor.
Always check with your doctor and your gut and your higher self to just
make sure that this is right for you because we want to make sure that it
feels right. Because this my friends is for education and enlightenment
and empowerment. So hello. It truly is a pleasure to invest this time
with you. For me, my super power has been guiding you to create a new
operating system, so you can skip the prison of feeling in pain, whether
it’s in your skin or in your joints or in your hormones and move into your
palace of power.
And I’ve been blessed to be in the natural health industry since the
turn of the century. How awesome? Honestly, turn of the century. I’m
a doctor of naturopathic medicine and I’ve been the director of clinical
operations of my clinical practice, Sanas Health Practice in Canada.
And please check out my website, www.drmarisol.com and my social
media platforms at Queen of the Thrones. As you’ve heard, I’m a award-
winning author through Hay House. My book, Oh Sh*t! just recently
released. So it’s available on Amazon and different platforms.
I’ve been featured on various TV shows from The Marilyn Denis in
Canada to NBC Bloom in the States, love being on TV. And I’m also
known as the creator and the inventor of the heat-less, the less-mess,
modernized, castor oil liver pack by the Queen of the Thrones brand.
So I’m very proud to have been able to put my little mark in medicine
because it was something that helped change my life. And reality is, this
is what it is for me. You feeling better is my passion. And I don’t think
that’s a lot to ask for. Am I right? Just like it’s not a lot for you to ask for,
to feel better.
Secret number one, why what you put onto your body matters. Into and
onto your body matters. Quality and real estate, let’s chat. I’m going to
start by spilling the beans right away. Let’s do this. One thing you must
know when it comes to using castor oil is every single where I go, it is
always packaged in plastic. It’s horrible. This should not be happening.
Everywhere. Amazon, everywhere you look, health food stores, you’re
going to notice it. The plastic and oil just simply don’t mix. For me, castor
oil must be absolutely in a glass bottle, it’s the only way I use it.
And it’s not your fault if you have a bottle of plastic at home. You’ve
been brainwashed to think it’s okay. I had it as well too. The first bottle
of castor oil that I had in my shelves was in plastic. I threw it away of
course, because that’s what is ideal to do. And plastic and oils, it actually
goes for all of your foods especially if you’re treating your skin because
one of the tools that you use to heal your skin is fat and is oil. So you
want it to very clean. So the cleanest oils is always in glass. Fat my
friends, carries toxins into the body and everywhere. They move in fat.
And it’s always why it’s so important to buy organic oil and clean
wherever you possibly can. So please go for the glass bottle and go for
the organic. Because it’s not only castor oil in glass or other oils. Castor
oil is the major carrier oil of the world. It is the best carrier oil of the
world. It is the best carrier oil for all of your essential oils. It’s such an
essential oil. So if it’s going to carry everything into the body, then you’re
going to be using castor oil, you want to use the best castor oil that isn’t
carrying plastics into your body.
It’s also a very important reason why you don’t want to mix castor oil
with your essential oils in like a pre-made bottle or buy it pre-made
because castor oil is very unique and very special and doesn’t oxidize
or go rancid as quickly as other oils do. So it’s very special, but know
as a carrier oil, we want it in glass. Because as you’re carrying things in
and you’re using a castor oil, the castor oil moves essential oils into the
liver, into the gut, into the lymphatic system where they can reach each
specific organ.
But if it’s packaged in plastic it’s just dangerous. Forget about it, totally
forget about it. It will actually carry more into your body than you
bargained for. So if it doesn’t say on Amazon, organic, hexane-free, cold
pressed, extra virgin, pure and if it isn’t bottled in glass, and if it seems
too cheap, it probably is, especially for fluid volume. Make sure on
Amazon, you’re looking at the volume. I in those cases do not want it.
Cheap castor oil bottled in plastic gives you the bonus of having plastic
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onto your fats and that gets into your liver.
And for me, who had a fatty liver at 26 years of age, when I wasn’t
drinking, not something I want anyone else to have. And aren’t we trying
to avoid a fatty plastic liver? I’m pretty sure. And fatty plastic hormones?
Confident too. Because plastics also mimic hormones in our bodies.
Super important. So I tell all my patients, if you have a bottle of castor
oil in plastic, please dispose of it immediately. So if you want to wake up
feeling and looking like new every day, do the things that will help you to
wake up feeling like new every day, like using good quality castor oil and
castor oil packs.
If you want to wake up looking like pizza, well then eat pizza. I bring this
up because my sister, when she was a teenager had a pizza face, she
truly did. She was suffering so much with it. It just truly broke my heart.
In her teens her acne was so red, inflamed and irritated. She seriously
would be lathering up the makeup to cover it up only that would just
make it worse and clog up the pores. Was this you? Do you remember
doing these things? And maybe now you’re having a resurgence of your
acne as you’re older? Very common.
Life for my sister was hard to navigate, especially social pressures and
how she was feeling. I remember her feeling very depressed and looking
for every single solution. But the problem was that her diet, was also
contributing to her depression. She was surviving on a diet of milk,
nachos, peanut butter sandwiches, chocolate and Twizzlers. Honestly,
that’s what my sister lived on. And she ate like they were going out of
style. And then the other things you love to eat too. You guessed it.
Pizza.
All these foods, high dairy, high wheat, high sugar are a recipe for
inflammation, a recipe for autoimmune conditions, a recipe to trigger
things that you don’t want to be triggering in your body. Disaster. It
all triggers just the immune system and it creates more inflammation.
And inflammation looks red and is irritated. And this picture is a perfect
example of inflammation happening in the body and just displaying
itself through the skin. Because the inflammation is going to go first and
foremost to the gut and it’s going to go to the skin in most people.
And then in most people, it will also go to a side tangent of the joints.
So depending on you, that’s where it goes. And if you got all three, it’s
challenging. You got to work at the systems, not on the supplements.
The defense zones of the body, you’ll know you have inflammation for
this reason because of the cardinal signs of them. Because inflammation
really is a defense mechanism and we’re working with it in order to help
our body to heal. And the cardinal signs, which are pain, dolor, rubor,
which is redness, calor, heat, tumor, which is a tumor and functional
lesions, which means you can’t function properly.
Maybe you can’t walk. Maybe for you, your skin. I’ve had many patients
who just can’t face the world. They drop out of school, they can’t face
the world because they don’t like what their face is showing. So it’s
always really important to notice and see when those cardinal signs of
inflammation are popping up.
[20:00]
And look, here’s an example of the inflammation, the cardinal signs.
We’re seeing again, we’re seeing those lumps and bumps and swellings.
So inflammation in the skin, it’s like you’re walking in the middle of
a bush, looking everywhere you are stepping because you’ve been
forewarned.
There’s poison ivy absolutely everywhere, but you just couldn’t avoid
it. And your skin got a raised circular high blight inflamed rash. The
cardinal signs of inflammation. It hurt and was irritated, almost burning.
And that’s poison ivy. If what I said earlier on is true, and the skin is a
siren or the smoke signal or the five-star fire alarm for the gut. If it’s
happening on the outside, then it must be happening on the inside.
And this is the reason why, when we see chronic disease patients who
have things like Hashimoto’s thyroiditis often commonly associated with
rashes, psoriasis, liver congestion, commonly associated with rashes.
You’ll see situations that look exactly like this, that look almost like a
poison ivy rash. Because that what’s happening out on the skin is also
happening within the gut. The mechanism of action. Well, the poison ivy
was triggered by the skin, but my friends, the internal fire was triggered
by things internally. Food, immune system, microbiome, etcetera.
Everything though comes down to dose. So if you’re bathing in that
poison ivy, you’re in a lot more trouble than if you just brushed by it.
True too. Because again, as I said, inside versus outside. So how do
you fix it? First and foremost, get yourself out of the poison ivy patch.
Get yourself out of them. That’s it. Get yourself out of the patch. That’s
all you got to do. Or the pizza, get out of it. Or the bottle of plastic.
Secondly, we must work at reducing the inflammation, especially
because the gut and the skin, they are the largest organs and it all
comes down to real estate.
What would you love your supplements to do for you? We invest so
much time and money and expect them to heal our guts. I hope here
you are going for quality too. Please note, supplements are not all
created equally and you want to get the very best for your body and
your temple. So in my book, Oh Sh*t! I discuss in depth how to select
your supplements and your resource. A supplement truly the size of half
of your fingernail. This is what we’re expecting our supplements to do.
It’s so small, especially if you compare it to the gut. That if you lay it out
is the size of a football field.
So you’ve got your little supplement size of a fingernail, and then you’ve
got the gut that is the size of the whole football field. What about the
skin? How far does that skin reach? Far, everywhere, but because of
this, healing your gut, liver, and skin and feeling better for you hasn’t
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been easy because you’ve been working mostly with supplements in
most cases. So for you, it’s probably been feeling with a treacherous,
exhausting, uphill battle, like trying to climb Mount Everest without any
equipment during avalanche and a snow storm and the abominable
snowman is chasing after you.
It sounds like a recipe for doom without a system for your skin, like the
castor oil pack, supporting your foundation, bottom line. Agreed? “I’m
a believer.” Another amazing comment. “I began to wake up to a bowel
movement. Those skies opened up and the angels were singing.” Kind
of awesome, right? So the gut was working better, the skin is working
better, everything is working better. And this is especially important,
especially when real estate is king. Because we have put a lot of faith
into those little pills, hoping that something so small can have an effect
on something so big like our systemic inflammation. There’s no way.
And fixing our digestive systems so we can absorb and heal. And
they can, but they also need help. They need better absorption, it’s
foundational. And now that I see things differently, it’s really hard to
believe that I thought that supplements could really make the difference
in my body that I was expecting them to. What I realized was that it
wasn’t another supplement that I needed because the supplements
couldn’t deal with the amount of systemic inflammation that I had. And
there was fires and my digestion needed to be reset and I have to be
able to absorb better.
And I needed to be able to cleanse my liver and move my lymphatic
system. And then I need to be taking another 10, 15, 20 supplements
to cover what a castor oil liver pack covers. I mean the castor oil liver
pack, when you put it onto your body, you wear it over the right area,
underneath the right rib cage. And you just pour two tablespoons of oil
and you wrap it around. And that covers an enormous amount of your
body, a big chunk of the real estate. And this is the big reason why it
helps support the system. The castor oil pack isn’t a treatment, it’s a self-
care practice.
But we have put so much faith in our treatments, in our supplements.
Much more power than they deserve. But castor oil packs is a daily
practice. What they do also is help absorb everything you do and taking
that pill. So whatever you’re doing, castor oil packs are daily practice that
help you to improve everything that you absorbed and everything that
you are doing to work that much better. Would you love that? I would. I
would love the thousands of dollars that I’m using on supplements and
using on treatments and going here and there and doing this and that,
in diets and organic foods.
I’d love for them to work better, please. I would love that. Sign me up.
It’s time for us to put our faith into our own ability, our own body’s
ability to heal truly. Faith serves as a quick acronym for all the functions
of the castor oil pack, functional digestion, absorption, elimination,
improving all that, giving you great antioxidants like glutathione, nitric
oxide, vitamin E, even quercetin, inflammation balancing. T for tension
and stress reduction so you can heal. And host microbiome benefits
with biofilm breakdown and improving and promoting positive, healthy
microbes.
So that was secret one. And now we’re onto secret two. Why your skin
is the last place to heal and how you can speed that up by healing the
gut. Here’s the thing. Everyone has digestive problems and all your
health begins in the gut. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, stated
it himself. We heal also from the inside out. This is a classic truth in
healing because you have joint pain, head pain, skin issues. You might
be a hormonal, you might be stressed, you might have a weak or crazy
immune system, no matter what, it all begins in the gut. No matter what.
It is a central hub my friends. And I speak about this again, in depth in
my book, please go check it out, Oh Sh*t! Lifestyle practices, a cleansing
dysbiotic diet, castor oil packs all play a role. And in my book, we talk
about the heal the gut diet that supports the whole system because
the castor oil packs don’t work alone. The castor oil packs work with
everything that you give it. And it works more specifically with your body,
supporting your body’s natural functions.
You see, if your gut is damaged, how can you absorb supplements
to heal? You can’t. What ends up happening with all those beautiful
supplements, they’re not even covering enough real estate, they’re just
not even getting into your body where they need to act and functionally
be. And so they become what’s called bedpan bullets. And this is well
known in medical circles especially from nurses at hospitals. Expensive
crap. So instead, what we’re looking to do is reset the gut foundation
from the outside in with the castor oil liver pack because it lessens a
load on the liver, it improves the skin.
And most of us, especially me, I prefer not to have to take yet another
supplement because I can tell you the amount of supplements I’ve
taken on my lifetime has been a lot. So now there’s better absorption of
supplements, foods, even medication, which allows for better healing
to occur. And here’s why you just can’t pop back another pill or uptake
even a pill of castor oil. Because well, you could, but castor oil orally just
makes you simply run to the bathroom in a one-time addictive, luxating,
launching gut ride, literally like a rollercoaster. And with your gut, you
don’t want that. You want balance.
It’s not just about getting it out. It’s about balancing how your gut is
working. So let’s put it into perspective, shall we? Here’s a patient of
mine, October 7 , 2015, having a pretty severe irritation coming from
th
the inside on her skin. And you can see that the irritation internally is
now coming out onto the skin and you can see it predominantly over the
adrenal areas and kidneys. And this is very common in women who have
immune body types. So immune body types are women who tend to
have hormonal problems with the immune connection.
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So that could be something with like a Hashimoto’s, that’s an immune
body type. So they’ll often see skin conditions happen where all the
immune system organs lie. Like here in the chest, the thymus. Let me
show you that.
[30:00]
All over the back. See, right there, there’s another rash right on her
chest. And because you heal inside up and up and down, that’s just
the way that we heal. Let’s see, eight months later, June 22 . Her skin is
nd
completely clear. So she was a dedicated patient. It took time. She was
definitely in love with her castor oil packs and doing them regularly.
So never give up because there is a light at the end of the tunnel. There
is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The other big question I get
is why can’t I just put the oil on my body and wear an old t-shirt? My
friends, the castor oil pack is purposeful. “The doctor dresses the wound
and nature heals it,” Doctor Joseph Murphy. Any stressors create fire.
And how diamonds are made, I know you are a diamond because you’re
shining, you have so much to shine. Diamonds are made by pressure
and fire.
And that’s the way that we forge our way forward, but so does disease
and inflammation. Because it corrupts the gut lining and the bacteria
that live there and then make a happy home. And what it does is
it actually makes it a home for unhealthy bacteria, promoting an
environment that is more prone to getting the bad bacteria. You see
your castor oil liver packs material is of a very certain softness touch and
tautness for a reason. And this is why we want a castor oil pack. Because
when you put the pack on your body, it powerfully calms you down and
reduces your stress.
The castor oil, maybe the active component that castor oil has as well-
researched for anti-inflammatory, well-researched for moving of the
smooth muscle of the bowels and of the uterus. But the research on the
castor oil pack itself, it’s claim to fame is that it functions on your stress
mechanisms via pressure because the skin is a brain of its own. The skin
like the gut, both are a brain on their own and can work on their own
independently. And the skin and the gut both work on pressure.
So when you put pressure in specific areas of the gut or on the skin,
what ends up happening is that you stimulate a response and the
bonus is that our skin is normally touched by those we love, unless it’s
something irritating. So if the material is soft and cozy, like a castor oil
liver pack, then what that does, that soft material stimulates and puts
the right pressure on your sensors, stimulating the relaxing feel good
hormone of oxytocin in your body.
It is so amazing how this does this. And here’s the thing. Is that it’s also
like the Goldilocks principle. Not too big, not too small, just right. We
don’t want to stimulate the whole admin or all the skin and the body.
No, we’re targeting a specific area, an area that is just right. And it’s the
same principle that we work with as a hug or as a swaddle for a baby
or a Band-Aid when a doctor puts a Band-Aid on. It’s, how we make a
booboo better. “The doctor dresses the wound and nature heals it,”
Doctor Joseph Murphy.
So these packs releasing oxytocin, which turns off your stress hormone
and allows a healing environment, reduces the stress, is the foundation
for healing and that’s the bottom line. We need the pack. Secret number
three. All your systems are involved. Hormones, digestion, immune,
nervous, it’s not just your skin. And that’s why my friends, you need a
system and not another supplement. So let me ask you, are you dealing
with thyroid hormone, weight gain problems, joint pain? Agreed? This is
you. I hear you. Here’s why the pack is essential.
The castor oil molecule only reduces and balances inflammation. That’s
it. These are all examples of inflammation on the tissues in different
areas. And inflammation my friends, as a side note, often is found in the
places where the lymphatic system lies. This is why it’s in these areas.
Lessen the load on the liver improving the skin. The castor oil pack, it
gently nudges the digestive tract, keeping it regulated and emptying
hormones, allowing the body to reset much more optimally.
I love the castor oil pack. The castor oil pack does a great job, but the
secret in it is that the body needs to be in a relaxed state for the magic
to happen. The anti-inflammatory effect with all the other goodness
and moving the bowels, don’t help if your body’s not in a relaxed state.
So it’s not just the castor oil alone. It’s the castor oil with the castor oil
pack because these two, when combined together are the magic, are the
miracle. They’re the ones that create the self-care practice. That isn’t a
treatment, but it’s a support.
It’s a foundation that helps everything else that you work, work better.
And helps your body’s vital force be able to shine itself and help you
vitally to sleep better, poop better, stress less, have better hormonal
balance and better skin. Makes sense, right? That’s it, it’s so simple. So
for me, in my history, my hormones were seriously off and I could feel
it. And I’m sure you can feel it too, especially when it comes to your skin,
but maybe you’re seeing it other ways in your skin too, with like body
odor or toxic smelling stuff. For me, my skin was also blotchy, very scaly
and dry, and my belly felt itchy.
This was a big thing for me. So all my lymphatics, my belly felt itchy
and would be red and I was constantly irritated in it. There was also
other things like my hair falling out in handfuls in the shower. Is this
you too along with your skin condition? Or maybe your period like mine
was, didn’t know who was coming or going? Could be you? Same deal.
I’d even gained up to 15 pounds and had a muffin top and my thighs
chafed together very uncomfortably.
I had cysts on my ovaries, I also had the diagnosis of PCOS, a fibroid
condition, IBS, chronic fatigue, I mean, mono, mold exposure. The list
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went on and on and the conditions just kept on coming, like label after
label. It was depressing and sad. But thank God I knew that I’m not a
label or a condition. And that’s just all it is. It’s just a condition and a
condition can be changed. No matter how you feel right now, even if
your body does feel like you’re fragile like an egg shell, that you can
break under any slight pressure. That was me. You too. It’s okay.
How about this? How about we start looking at the three cardinal signs
of a hormonal liver skin and gut problems and know how to address
them. Because they’re contributing honestly to the biggest struggles of
your life. And they are that you can’t poop, you can’t sleep and you feel
super stressed. Who’s got that? Hello. So I love it. All of these comments
again, saying and supporting the exact same thing that people are
having better bowel movements, better sleep, better stools, better
everything, which is what we’re looking for.
Because the castor oil liver pack, it’s a new system. It is not another
supplement. Systems help you leverage while you’re doing less. That’s
it. Helps you leverage while you do less. Imagine if you could take
less supplements, imagine if you could do less things for your health.
Imagine. Leverage things so you can do less. That’s what I know every
single smart entrepreneur does in their business. It’s what I know every
single doctor does for their patients, make sure that they leverage things
so that they can do less and not more.
And let me ask you this. Did you know you, you my friend, you’re one in
a million. One in a trillion actually. For you to get here, trillions of choices
had to be made. And you being here along with millions of other women
around the world who are suffering because your systems are just so
off. And because another supplement it’s just going to contribute to
more of the same experience that you’re having.
If you’re not fixing or dealing with the improving of the absorption,
helping get antioxidants that are key for detoxing and cleansing,
like glutathione, nitric oxide from the castor oil pack. Or reducing
the inflammation like the castor oil pack does. Or helping with the
microbiome and balancing it and getting rid of biofilm. Or helping you
simply just to reduce stress and tensions so your body can actually heal.
And another supplement, isn’t going to be the thing that’s going to help
you sleep better, poop better, feel less stressed, have better hormonal
balance.
It’s just not going to be able to do it. Because no matter how small the
supplement, especially if it’s not absorbing, it’s probably going to be
just doing more harm to your body and more harm to your wallet than
anything because your system is off. It’s a systemic problem. We must
reset the system bottom line. For me, the first time that I did the castor
oil pack honestly is stamped in the movie screen of my mind forever.
And I really hope that tonight we stamped in your mind how important
it is to use and remember about the castor oil liver packs. Of course,
always check in with your doctor to make sure if it’s right for you. But we
covered such important material.
[40:00]
And when I opened my mind up to the castor oil pack and to new things,
it helped me really to get my questions answered. And those were the
questions that we spoke about in depth today. Which are, why what
you put into or on your body matters. The quality of castor oil matters.
Wearing a good organic cloth. So like the Queen of the Thrones castor
oil pack.
These are things that we want good quality oil in a glass bottle. It’s
organic, pure, hexane-free, ideally extra virgin and an excellent organic
cotton wrap compress pack. Secret number two, why your skin is the
last place to heal. The skin is the last place to heal because it’s not only
the skin you’re healing. You also got to heal the gut. So it becomes the
last place to heal because you got to heal the gut first before you heal
the skin. And it can be tricky. So do note that. And then secret number
three, it’s all systems involved, hormone, nervous, immune, digestive
skin and it’s why another supplement won’t cut it.
It’s why it’s not about another supplement, it’s about a system. That
my friends, is what I’ve been working with on my patients, since the
turn of the century and over a decade in clinical practice, is how do we
systematize and how do we make it easier for ourselves to do it? And
how do we feel better? How do we get those mini motivational wins? The
castor oil pack that it helps you feel better. And for those people who
are practicing it, those select few who are aware of all the benefits, they
practice it nightly. And others do it for three to five times a week.
Just aim to get it on as often as you can, for a minimum of at least one
hour and ideally overnight. And again, it’s worn underneath the right
rib cage. So on your right side, you place the pack and it conveniently
fits because the pack is shaped like an infinity symbol for your curves.
So please make sure again, I’m going to reiterate this because it’s so
important. Only use organic cotton and a hundred percent pure organic
castor oil packaged in glass for this ritual.
And make sure to replace your pack every two months. Super important
because you don’t want to be recycling and re-circling the things that
are coming out of your body. And there are many ways to do them,
including a modern version that I created for my patients. And it
requires no heat and is super easy to use. Again, follow me at Queen of
the Thrones or go to my website to check those things out. But here you
go. When you start, you’re also going to see why people say that once
you do a castor oil pack, you never look back. You just never do because
they just are that good.
So thank you so much for your time. I’m really grateful we were able to
spend this time. I wish we had more. Again, if you want to spend more
time with me, please go follow me. But I’m glad that we got to share and
understand in-depth skin system issues, the three skin system scenarios
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and how to support them with an amazing system like the castor oil
liver pack. Because we know the time we spend here is precious and it’s
valuable. And we know we can’t get our time back, but my hope is that
this was transformational and opened your mind to opportunity and
possibility.
Possibilities that support how you desire to live your best life, how
healthy you are, the wealth you experience, the love and freedom you
live too. Because at the end of the day my friends, it’s a choice to take
a leap of faith towards truth. And remember the acronym faith when
it comes to the castor oil pack, function of the absorption, elimination
and digestion, antioxidant status improvement via glutathione, vitamin
E, quercetin, even nitric oxide. Inflammation balancing, so powerful,
tension and stress reduction, love that.
We can heal, we can call in our vital force. And then of course, H, host
to the mostess and the microbiome. Amazing. What a wonderful time.
I’d love to connect. Thank you so much for having this personal time
with me. Please make sure to find me at drmarisol.com or at Queen of
the Thrones on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube. Have a beautiful day.
We’ll see you soon.
BACTERIA, FUNGI AND
INFLAMMATION
Ryan: Hello there, and welcome to day three: Bacteria, Fungi and
Inflammation. And this really is the heart of the whole thing. Like
we talked about leading up to this, in a chronic skin condition like
eczema, some internal factor likely was the start of it. It could be
environmental toxicants, like we talked about in the last lesson. It could
be a microbiome dysbiosis issue. It could be your liver having troubles
detoxifying, hormones, or stress, nutritional deficiencies. Whatever
the cause is, I want to repeat a thousand times throughout this series,
you’ve got to find it, and you’ve got to deal with it. This thing is never
going to go away if you don’t.
Teddy: And like we said, for this particular challenge, identifying the
cause was easy for us. I was clearly in very serious trouble after giving
birth to Rocky. And I did get antibiotics to save my life and make sure
Rocky actually had a mom. And from that, enough of them made their
way to Rocky to wipe out his gut and create enough of a dysbiosis in his
microbiome to result in high-grade eczema.
For you, it could be something entirely different. It could have been a

hormone imbalance or a food sensitivity issue, or an adverse reaction
to pharmaceuticals, or a symptom of a broader autoimmune issue. But
whatever the problem, please do us a favor and identify it. But once
you’ve identified it, do something about it.
Ryan: Any of the potential root causes we’ve mentioned again, they’re
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the root causes of a whole lot of diseases. We’ve been hearing about
them in the cancer world for a long time. Now, what we’re seeing is that
the root cause of cancer starts out as the root cause of something like
eczema.
So again, work with a practitioner to find your root cause. That said,
now you’ve got it. As we mentioned in the last lesson, in a lot of cases,
it’s pretty much like you’ve got an entirely new root cause on top of your
skin in addition to whatever was the cause of it in the inside in the first
place.
In mid to higher grade cases especially, now there’s an infection on the
skin and a whole lot of inflammation to go along with that infection. This
is exactly happened to Rocky. For the first few months of his life, we
noticed isolated breakouts on various parts of his body.
Teddy: And sometimes his forehead would look bad. Sometimes it was
his arms, his legs, and so on. And then, seemingly overnight, he broke
out all over his body. And it wasn’t just the redness itself. His skin was
so badly inflamed. Parts of it would literally be raised way higher on the
surface than on the rest of his skin.
And while temporary inflammation is a natural response to a wound,
as we’ve all likely heard by now, chronic inflammation can also lead to
its own set of problems and diseases, not to mention providing this
infection with a place to hide, so to speak.
From what we’ve come to understand, this moment was when his skin
itself became infected. It’s not something people think about a lot, but
we were reminded the skin is the largest organ of our bodies. So when
that gets infected, it should be a really big deal.
Ryan: But as one of our favorite integrative dermatologists, we’ve come
to find throughout all this likes to put it, if your liver is infected, you treat
it. If your kidney is infected, you treat it. But for some reason, when the
skin gets infected, and in most cases, it’s glaring in your face, nothing
gets done about it.
In the conventional world, it’s treated like something that just needs to
be managed, and they do recommend things like bleach baths in the
conventional world. So, I mean, they’re on the right track, but it’s in such
a haphazard way they recommend these things that nothing is actually
going to get resolved for good.
Let alone, there’s just about a million things you can do to bathe yourself
or your child in a highly antibacterial solution that doesn’t involve going
to the drug store and buying some conventional bottle of bleach and
dunking yourself or your child in it here and there.
Teddy: Yes. And on the natural side, like we talked about, a lot of the
folks on this side of the fence think it’s purely something to do with
the internal terrain. That all you need to do is heal the gut, balance the
hormones, et cetera, and that’s all you need to do to heal.
And before we go any further, the truth is, in a whole lot of cases, that is
indeed all you need to do to heal. We’ve got a very extreme lens in which
we view things. I guess you can say. Our first son had stage four cancer,
and we had to go all the way. Our third child and second son had high-
grade eczema, and we had to go all the way.
You may well not be dealing with high-grade eczema or a severe case
of another skin disease. You may well just need to resolve that gut or
hormone issue, or just get out all the toxicants out of your life, and
everything will clear up.
Ryan: But our thing has always been going all the way. So we’re going
to take you all the way. And all the way, in the case of eczema involves
dealing with an infection on the skin. So again, you’ve got two issues
here, the infection itself and the chronic inflammation. We’ll look at the
infection first and wrap in the inflammation a little further in.
Now, from what we’ve learned, there are two approaches to this.
Again, depending on severity, it could be that on the scale between
microbial imbalance and full-blown infection, you could have more of
an imbalance. One strain of bacteria has started to gain a foothold over
the others. So to resolve it, it’s not so much about treating the infection
and wiping out all the bad guys as much as just bringing balance back to
your skin’s microbiome
Teddy: And within bringing back balance to the skin’s microbiome, all
the doctors we’ve talked to have all agreed that it’s basically the same
with the skin as it is with the gut. And that there’s two components to it,
building a healthy terrain and introducing good bacteria to live in and on
that terrain.
The Zielinski’s are masters at nourishing healthy skin. So we’re going to
leave the terrain part to them, but we have experimented with a ton of
various products specifically for introducing good bacteria back to the
skin. So we’ll have a look at some of our favorites right now.
Before we do, as we alluded to earlier, it’s important to note that this
may or may not be the best long-term approach for your specific
situation. If it’s a milder case, then there might not be that much of a
full-blown infection. And simply rebalancing the skin’s microbiome is
indeed the primary thing you need to do, at least as far as what to do
from the outside is concerned.
Ryan: Skin probiotics and how we use them. So there are a ton of
various skin probiotic, skin biotic products on the market these days.
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It wasn’t always that way, but companies have started catching on the
last several years that there’s a biome, not only in your gut, but like we
talked about, even in your house, in your environment, but in particular
on your skin.
Just like with your gut, you don’t want a completely nuked, sterile skin.
Your skin is actually thriving with the microbes of its own. And so the
idea is you want to keep a well-balanced skin biome, just like you want
to keep a well-balanced gut biome. We’ll talk about actually coming up
here about--
This may not be enough, and you may have to look at some antibacterial
strategies, but for now, like we talked about, a good place to start is just
seeing if you can get some problem areas or even just your whole body
under control with just kind of balancing the biome with these various
products.
So again, we’re really big on rotation, kind of having categories of things
and then finding a few products that we think are the best in that
category and then rotating through those products because why limit
yourself to one? So these are kind of the three that we’ve gravitated to.
I do like to think that they are some of the best, but that being said,
we’ll start with probably the simplest and simple is not necessarily a
bad thing. It’s inexpensive. You can have a lot of it on hand. And that is
MaryRuth’s Skincare Probiotic topical spray. They’ve been doing this for
quite some time. When I say a lot of companies have been catching on
lately, they’ve had their skin probiotic for a long time now.
I love MaryRuth’s. It’s a solid, good, family-run brand. This particular
product is actually extracted from grass. So it’s just straight organic
grass, that is, and it’s just straight out of the ground. They extract, I think,
it’s seven different probiotics strains. And it’s just in a nice, easy pump
bottle.
So the two times that we at least most like to do skin biotic type stuff is
right after the shower because then you just kind of washed everything
off. You may have stripped some of your skin biotics in that washing.
And so, yeah, just after the shower is a good time to just spray your
whole body down with something like this.
And then also at night time as well before you go to bed because then
you just kind of marinate in it all night, I guess you could say, and wake
up in the morning fully balanced. So yeah, a nice, very simple product.
You can just spray all over. Like I said, it’s the MaryRuth’s.
We also like this Derma Colonizer, and the brand is by MyByome, and
Byome is spelled B-Y-O-M-E. This is a little more elaborate of a product
which it’s more expensive. So MaryRuth’s is great for just having on hand
all over all the time. But the reason this is more expensive and more
elaborate is it’s not just the probiotic blend.
There’s vitamin E, vitamin D, a whole bunch of different oils and waxes.
So it’s kind of nourishing the skin, and it’s got I don’t know how many
different probiotic strains, but it looks like at least seven or eight, just
like MaryRuth’s. And the nice thing is they complement each other too.
So the probiotics that are in MaryRuth’s, they’re not the identical ones to
the MyByome. So yeah, you’re getting the blend there. And so we talked
about P2 Probiotic Power in the cleaners section, but like I said, we use
a few of their products. These are another couple that we use. And the
main one that I wanted to talk about it’s called the iSoothe and Protect
Your Skin.
And this is just a spray, a little different than a pump bottle. And that it’s
a spray like that. So yeah, not only do they have their proprietary blend
of their own probiotic blend, but they also have these enzymes that are
made specifically for breaking down biofilms that pathogens live in.
Biofilms, not a whole lot of people really know about them, but if you
talk to a lot of the top practitioners out there, they’re very well aware
of biofilms, both inside and outside, as a real cause for concern. So it’s
good to have a product that addresses that.
So this is the skin spray, again, just right after the shower, before bed, or
even when you wake up in the morning, just spray it all down. It’s a good
place for it. And they also have a body wash as well. This is the iClean
Every Inch Face, Hand & Body Wash.
So again, you can get a separate bottle. You mix some of this in with just
some regular water, and then like it says, you can use it for face wash,
hand wash, body wash, whatever you want to do. And yeah, it’s just
another way of repopulating your skin’s biome, not only with a stand-
alone product like this but also in the shower and that sort of thing. I
think that does it for the skin biotic and how we use them portion.
Now, here’s the thing like we talked about. You could either just need to
balance the terrain, so to speak, or you could have a much bigger battle
on your hands in terms of a serious infection of the skin. For a low or
mid-grade case, from our understanding, this is a good place to start.
See what nourishing and rebalancing the skin does from the outside.
If it works, great. If not, you may have a more serious infection that’s
going to require more than just rebalancing. The way it was explained to
us is say you’ve got a serious candida infection in your gut. No amount
of probiotics and things known to heal your gut lining are going to solve
that problem.
The candida has already set up shop within the gut and has strong
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defenses built up and simply isn’t going to let any of those things do the
helpful things they’re intended to do, which same thing with the skin,
which we never really think about in this way, but it is indeed an organ
just like our gut.
Teddy: Yeah. And in talking to Dr. Erin, the creator of the mixture for
the most severe cases that we ended up on, you’ll hear about in lesson
seven. He put it really bluntly for us in a way that makes so much sense.
He says the madness of how eczema is approached these days is it’s so
different than if it were any other organ.
If someone has an infection in their gut, that infection gets treated.
If someone has an infected liver, that infection gets treated. But for
some reason, with eczema, a blatant in your face infection of the skin,
our largest organ that we can literally see with our eyes as opposed
to having to guess and test for what’s going on with the other organs,
somehow it gets treated like it’s not there.
When you take the infection on the skin as seriously as an infection
in any other organ, that’s when you start seeing amazing and lasting
results. And it’s interesting in that, as we mentioned earlier, there are
conventional recommendations that get close to taking it seriously. They
just don’t get recommended in a way that would effectively treat the
situation.
Ryan: Yeah. Topical antibiotics do get recommended sometimes, but
the way they’re usually prescribed is just to tamp down anything that’s
gotten really severe, not in a way that would actually completely resolve
the issue.
You’ll hear a lot of conventional dermatologists recommend doing the
bleach bath here and there like we talked about, which is certainly an
anti-microbial measure, but again, without any rhyme or reason as
to how one would go about it to actually clear the entire infection, as
opposed to just kicking it back down a little bit.
Plus, bleach itself, again, extremely toxic. There are antipathogenic baths
you can take, which are indeed actually healing, which we’ll get to a little
later that don’t involve all the harmful effects of chlorine.
Teddy: So, we’ll take a look at some of the things we found helpful for
clearing skin infections that are completely non-toxic. And before we
launch into it, it’s very important to continue making this note here that
again, while we’re talking a lot about topical skin stuff and dealing with
this external infection on the skin, we’ve still got to emphasize the two-
way street thing.
And that the real healing is going to come when you focus on healing
the inside and outside simultaneously, which again, in addition to
everything we’re talking about here, means watching all of our additional
presentations on root causes, working with a holistic or integrative
doctor, et cetera.
All right. So with that, as we’ve mentioned, there are quite a few things
out there that are both antipathogenic and anti-inflammatory at the
same time that are natural and don’t come with a ton of chemicals to
choose from. Let’s take a look at some of our favorites.
Okay. So these are just some of our favorite anti-inflammatory and
antipathogenic lotions. And we’re basically calling anything, any sort
of topical product a lotion for this use case. If that’s confusing, we are
actually trying to be less confusing doing that.
Ryan: Probably we should have just said topical products from the
beginning, but Valerie had them all laid out. They’re clearly not all
lotions.
Teddy: Exactly. So a few of them are super easy, and coconut oil, you
can get at any of your local health food grocery stores. I say health food
grocery store because you still want to get something that’s organic and
in a glass bottle. But coconut oil has really great anti-inflammatory and
antibacterial properties. So for really mild cases of eczema, it can be
extremely helpful.
And a lot of these, really for those mid to mild cases of eczema, are
extremely effective and all you really need from the outside topical
perspective, as long as you are healing the gut at the same time and
keeping in mind that whole two-way street thing. Because just healing
one rash isn’t enough if you want to keep the rashes from coming back.
So we also have castor oil, which again has really great antibacterial
properties.
You can even do castor oil packs, which is something that we’ve been
doing for a really long time with Ryder, our oldest son, who was
diagnosed with cancer seven years ago. We’ve done the castor oil packs
just to keep things moving. I’m sure that you’ve heard how that fat
actually helps to improve bowel movements and regularity.
So those have been a huge part of our protocol. And as it turns out,
great for eczema and other chronic skin conditions as well. This one
is pomegranate seed oil, but we also love this company. We buy
their jojoba and red raspberry seed oil, which also have the same
antibacterial and anti-inflammatory effects. So I’m sure you’re starting to
see kind of a pattern with a lot of these great oils.
Ryan: Yeah. In general, like she said, rotating through a few different
just singular oils that all have those properties.
Teddy: So then getting to kind of the next level of oils are ozonated oils.
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And with the ozonated oils, they can be ozonated flax, hemp, avocado.
This one is ozonated castor oil, and that’s taking the oil itself and really
just up leveling it.
Ryan: Ozone, in particular, is known for its antipathogenic properties.
People use it to clear infections of all kinds. Actually, we got an ozone
machine a while back for just the healing benefits of ozone in general.
And with it came these samples of the ozone oil. And again, it’s just kind
of supercharged oil.
And then, when we were going through everything with Rocky, we just
kind of pulled out the samples and just put it on a small patch. And yeah,
it was just like overnight, just really huge.
Teddy: It was pretty amazing some of the patches that we put these oils
on. As you can see, this is a really tiny bottle, but when you find one that
actually works well for your skin, you can order them in larger bottles,
but it is important to take care of them properly so that the ozone just
doesn’t completely dissipate and make sure that you’re going through
them quickly putting the lid back on and putting them in the fridge.
The ones that we found to be the best were ozonated flax oil and
ozonated hemp oil. I felt like ozonated avocado oil was just great just for
all-over skin moisturization. But when it came to actually healing certain
very red, angry flares, it was the ozonated flax oil that, for us, we saw
pretty dramatic results with.
Ryan: Yeah. Propolis, this is kind of another crossover from our
cancer days. I had just been studying all sorts of different anticancer
compounds and came across propolis and then started-- and it’s bee
propolis, by the way. It’s something that honey bees use to kind of seal
their hive, repair their hive, that sort of thing, almost like the glue that
they use in making their hive, protecting their hive, all that stuff.
And I just couldn’t believe it wasn’t as big of a deal as, say, turmeric
or curcumin, resveratrol, some of these things that people’s minds
just automatically go to when they think about cancer. But yeah, the
research on it just blew me away. And what do you know? It’s one of
those things that does a million different things.
But again, when we talk about protecting, it’s actually very
antipathogenic for the reason I think because it’s protecting the hive
from outside invaders and infections of the hive, that sort of thing. And
our favorite propolis company, Natural Nectar, actually recently started
making this topical product.
And it came to mind when we were going through all this, and I looked
it up, and sure enough, now there’s topical propolis products, so we’ve
been using this and again, seeing amazing results. And I’m just really
happy that this is now in a topical form because again, it’s just one of
the--
When we talk about things that we just gravitated towards, propolis
is just one of those things. So really happy this is in a topical product
now. So this is Golden Salve Natural EZ by Jane Health. Jane Barlow
Christiansen is actually a friend of ours down in Salt Lake here locally in
Utah.
She’s got a couple of companies, Barlow Herbal, and Jane Health. And
this is a salve with a lot of good stuff in it: shea butter, coconut oil,
beeswax, vitamin E, all that stuff. But the primary thing is from her
herbal experience and knowledge is this lomatium herb, which is just
highly antipathogenic and anti-inflammatory. You can go on this.
So people take it internally to clear their body of infections on the
inside. And if you’re not careful, you can really overdo it. And you can
read some pretty crazy stories about people just breaking out all over
because they killed everything too fast, and it was just too much for their
body to clear. So it’s really powerful. And again, just taking it internally,
that’s a whole another story. And as long as you do it the right way, it’s
fine, but people don’t always do it the right way.
Teddy: Another one that we have is this organic Manuka Skin Soothing
Cream. And this was actually made by a mom whose son suffered from
very severe eczema. So we actually have her clothing as well, which we
talked about in our symptom management lesson, these wonderful
soothing clothes. And she also has this great skincare line too.
Ryan: SaniTru, again. Yeah, I mean, it’s great for cleaning, and people
also use it for topical skin infection clearing purposes. When you
talk about just this sanitization, we talked about how there’s a lot of
companies that sell just bottles of this that you have to refill all the time.
When the crisis first happened, and everyone was buying up anything
they could do to sanitize their hands with, all the natural health people
were buying all of those bottles of hypochlorous acid because they knew
what a big deal it was and able to kill pretty much anything on contact.
So we just loved it.
Again, now we can make unlimited supply of it, and I mean, cleaning the
floor or clean your hands. It’s completely non-toxic and works just fine
for both those purposes.
Teddy: And one thing to mention too just why we’re talking so much
about kind of these antipathogenic properties is the big thing that we
learned throughout our eczema journey is that the Staph living on the
skin is the primary driver of perpetuating all of those flare-ups.
So unless we’re addressing that topically, then the cycle is just going to
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keep continuing, and those flares are going to just keep driving other
flares to happen. So unless we take care of the pathogenic issues on our
skin with antipathogenic and anti-inflammatory different topical lotions,
then we’re just going to keep on having those vicious cycles.
Ryan: Yeah, exactly. And I wish there was just one natural product that
just did it, and we could say this is all you need, but I think that’s why
we’re big on rotation, in general, when it comes to supplements or
different therapies or whatever. It’s just that they’re all going to have
their strengths and not necessarily weaknesses.
Especially when you’re talking about targeting bacteria and stuff like
this, when you’re talking about killing bacteria, even killing cancer cells,
what have you, some stuff is going to do really well on certain strains of
bacteria. Other stuff’s going to do really well on other strains of bacteria.
So if you can keep kind of this constant pressure--
Teddy: And these are by all means not the only products that serve the
purpose that we’re talking about here. Silver is another great one. We
had a ton of people writing in saying that they were able to kill the Staph
on their skin completely just using colloidal silver products.
So there are tons of other products out there, but really the purpose of
us showing these products to you is how we look at products and for
what you can keep in mind when you’re deciding what to add in to your
regimen.
Ryan: Last but not least, good old aloe. And you can buy aloe in the
health food store, but it’s got a ton of preservatives, and it’s watered
down. This stuff is like stocked in aloe brand. If you just pour it out
compared to what you get in the health food store, it’s way thicker and
just obvious a better product.
But yeah, it’s 100% pure raw aloe gel. Everyone knows aloe for being
very soothing to the skin. I mean, I think that’s what you first think of
when you think of aloe. If you get a sunburn and you’re all naturally
minded, put some them aloe on it, but would you know aloe is also in
addition to being soothing, which is a pretty big deal in eczema, highly
antipathogenic, and highly anti-inflammatory?
So, yeah, I mean, in addition, we take this for gut healing. We’ll
probably talk about this when we talk about supplements as well, but
just for addressing symptoms and addressing the antibacterial, anti-
inflammatory thing at the same time, kind of checks all those boxes, and
it feels real cool to have a big old jug of aloe on you at all times. So there
you go. That it for now?
Teddy: That’s it for now.
Ryan: So again, those are some of our favorite products. And I do like
to think that after this long of researching healing chronic conditions
and geeking out on healing products of all kinds, we’ve got sort of a
sixth sense for gravitating towards the really good ones, but we’re by no
means saying that just because we’ve mentioned something means it’s
the only effective thing out there.
It’s more of the overall strategy of identifying several really good
antipathogenic and anti-inflammatory products and rotating through
them in a methodical way that we really want to leave with you.
Speaking of methodical ways of doing things, I guess there’s a reason
our website is The Stern Method. Another thing we first started working
into our rotation consistently when we were going through cancer with
Ryder and now has made a big comeback with Rocky are healing baths.
Teddy: There are so many things you can put into your bath water that
all have various healing effects. It’s really amazing. And if we were to go
through them all, we’d probably be here for the next hour just talking
about bathwater. So after this series is over, I’d encourage you to spend
some time researching all of the various healing baths out there and
seeing what resonates with you most.
We are going to cover a few throughout the class and show you the ones
that make the most sense to us from an eczema perspective. And we’ve
heard others having success with as well. Now, since this is the Bacteria,
Fungi, and Inflammation day, we’ll start there with a couple of baths that
have been around for a long time, the apple cider vinegar bath and the
hydrogen peroxide bath.
So early on with Rocky, I took him to a conventional dermatologist just
to confirm that he did indeed have eczema. I just didn’t want to miss
anything and just needed to be sure that’s what we were indeed dealing
with. This conventional dermatologist told us yes, it was indeed eczema.
And didn’t really give us a whole lot of hope, saying that he would
probably never outgrow it, and it would just continue to get worse. One
of the things that stuck out to me was during that visit, in addition to
recommending just more steroids and other prescriptions, she said, if I
wanted to, I could give him a weekly bleach bath.
Ryan: Did she even give any explanation for that at the time?
Teddy: No. She didn’t give any explanation actually, which now it’s really
funny because now, with our greater understanding of what eczema is
and why she would recommend the bleach bath in the first place is to
help rid the body of that Staph that’s living on the skin and perpetuating
the flare-ups.
Well, ironically, it turns out that there’s better ways to do it, and
thankfully, I never subjected Rocky to it just because it just never felt
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right to me to submerge my baby in bleach. And mind you, it would be a
very tiny amount, but still, just any amount just didn’t feel right. And we
knew that there had to be better alternatives.
Ryan: Yeah. So, I mean, like we talked about, healing baths are
something that we’ve been very familiar with for a long time, with
everything we learned about going through cancer with Ryder. Hydrogen
peroxide baths came up very early on in that journey, not necessarily
for the topical antibacterial component of it, but more for generally
hydrogen peroxide. It’s H2O2. So there’s an extra oxygen molecule.
So a lot of people say it’s a very oxygenating therapy to do to just get
more oxygen into your body in general. But for these purposes, we were
already aware. It’s a very well-known healing bath within the natural
health world. Hydrogen peroxide is a naturally occurring molecule
versus chlorine, which is more of a toxic chemical, which is found in just
regular bleaches, just a whole lot of chlorine, and a whole lot of other
chemicals.
So with hydrogen peroxide, this is nothing new to us. It does sound a
little extreme at first if you’ve never come upon the concept before, but
I mean, just click around on it, and you’ll see it’s not just us making this
up. It’s a pretty well-known thing.
Teddy: And this is food-grade hydrogen peroxide too.
Ryan: Yeah. So this is not going to the drug store and getting a bottle of
3%, the little brown bottle of 3% hydrogen peroxide because then you’re
getting God knows what in terms of all the other chemicals that’s in that
brown bottle of the drug store. The food-grade hydrogen peroxide is
35% hydrogen peroxide.
And again, it’s food grade. So it’s a cleaner product. When it comes to
the specifics of a hydrogen peroxide bath, there are a couple of things
to note. First and foremost is you do not want any chlorine in the water
because then you could get some potentially unwanted reactions.
I mean, I think just a little bit is okay, but if you have just a bath full
of chlorinated water and put the hydrogen peroxide in there, you
might not notice anything, but it would not be a desirable thing to be
happening while you’re in the bath. Let’s put it that way.
So in this house that we built, we made sure to get a whole house water
filter. When we were in the house we were renting before this, we did
not have a whole house water filter. So there’s two things you can do
there. There’s a special bath ball that’s meant specifically for putting in
baths and kind of soaking up all the chlorine.
And that’s for a bath. I think the brand is Rain Shower, but without an E
at the end. We had that, but still, just putting a ball in a bath didn’t seem
like enough to really be confident that we were getting all of the chlorine
out of the bath. So we actually also got a shower filter and then filled
the bathtub up with the shower filter and also had the bath ball in there.
So it was kind of like two-way mechanism of making sure there was no
chlorine in there.
Teddy: And also just to make a note, in that house that we were renting,
we were on the city water. So we knew that it was being treated with
chlorine. The house that we live in now, we have a well, and we know
there’s no chlorine in the water anyways. But we still have the water
filtration system.
Ryan: Indeed. It is nice to not have treated water in the first place. But
yeah, here it’s amazing that we finally got to make this happen, being on
our own well and everything. But if you’re not on your own well, which
Lord knows we weren’t for the longest time, if you’re on just some kind
of city water, assume that it’s chlorinated because pretty much all public
water is chlorinated. So that’s a big deal.
And then as far as what you can do, and maybe we’ll just talk about both
side-by-side because both-- I mean, again, when we’re talking about
antibacterial, antipathogenic measures, it’s not like one’s better than the
other. It’s just apple cider vinegar is known to kill pathogens. Hydrogen
peroxide is known to kill pathogens. Apple cider vinegar baths have
been going back a long time. Hydrogen peroxide baths have been going
back a long time.
So it’s more in the spirit of rotation that we’re talking about both of
them here. And actually, you can find kind of the same general range
of information online when it comes to exact amounts and that sort of
thing. And sadly, there is not a consensus. You can read 10 different blog
articles and get five different recommendations for how much hydrogen
peroxide or how much apple cider vinegar to put in a standard 20-gallon
tub.
Those recommendations, I would say for each of them, actually, it’s of
kind of funny how that works out, but anywhere from about a half a cup
to as much as four cups is kind of on the high range that I see. I think the
main thing to just really keep in mind, particularly when you’re talking
about hydrogen peroxide, is just the comfort level overall.
Like when you get into a hydrogen peroxide bath, you can feel a little
like, oh, that’s something exciting on my skin. You know what I mean?
And that’s fine, but if it ever migrates to the area of discomfort, then you
know--
Teddy: And also building up to make sure you never get to that point
where you’re even sitting in it feeling like, oh boy, this is on its way to
not feeling very good. You really want to start slowly and build up with
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anything. And that goes for supplements, time in the sauna, time under
the lights, really anything that we talk about. We always try to build up
ourselves so that we never get to that oh boy, what have I just done
point.
And another thing to note, too, is just on the building up point. You
want to not just make sure that you’re comfortable in the tub but also to
make sure how your skin is reacting afterward. And that might take you
a day or two to make sure that your skin likes it and that it’s not drying it
out.
Ryan: Yeah. So that building up. I mean, that’s what we do with all
the healing stuff. We build up, start small, start even below what the
recommended amount is by a long shot. So maybe even start out with
like a quarter cup just to get your feet wet literally and then work up
from there, whatever you’re comfortable with.
But again, just, yeah, make sure to avoid discomfort. Speaking of
discomfort, you do want very warm water, open your pores up, and just
let everything get into your skin the best that it can, but don’t make it too
hot.
Teddy: And then when you get out, it’s also important, and I don’t know
if we mentioned this, but it is worth mentioning: don’t completely towel
dry yourself off because that’s a very drying thing to do for anyone’s
skin, but especially skin that’s going through a chronic condition. So
leave your skin a little bit damp. And that’s a great time to apply the
lotions that we talked about.
And then from there, getting into clean clothes, fresh clothes that you’ve
laundered either with some of the non-toxic detergent that we talked to
you guys about or the magnets that we talked to you about. But really,
just getting something that doesn’t have old bacteria on it, especially
while your skin is so open and exposed.
Ryan: So when it comes to baths, same as the topical products. It’s not
so much in thinking in terms of what’s the best. It’s more about how do
I get the best rotation for what I’m going through right now. You just
learned about two very powerful antipathogenic and anti-inflammatory
baths.
And we have this section so early on in the class because if you’ve got
a decent case of eczema going, there’s likely an infection involved. So
if you focus on these two up front, you’ll probably make some good
headway there. Like we mentioned in the video, most folks we’ve found
recommend not doing hydrogen peroxide more than two or three times
a week.
So if you were to do two or three hydrogen peroxide baths and two or
three apple cider vinegar baths for a week or two combined with a good
rotation of the topical products we talked about, you’d be off to a really
good start on the infection front and likely be ready to taper down a
bit more to make room for some of the baths we’re going to be talking
about in lessons four and five as well.
Teddy: And one more thing before we leave and come back and start
adding even more stuff in on that note, we emphasized the method part
of our name a minute ago, but that should really be hammered in here.
When we were going through cancer with our first son, there was 100
times more to take into consideration and implemented than even what
we’re going to be covering here for eczema.
The only way we were able to keep track of all of it was by making our
own list of things we were rotating through and having a really good
schedule in place. And we’d highly encourage you to do the same. It’s
going to be a little different for everyone, depending on what you end up
getting and what your existing schedule looks like that you’re adding to.
And it doesn’t need to be perfect and down to an exact science either.
But just getting everything you’re doing down on paper so that there’s
an easy way to track everything is life-changing, especially when you’re
trying to pull off something as involved as this.
Ryan: Also, when you’re making your schedule and rotation, have
tapering in mind. You’ll start off really strong and decrease as your
symptoms improve. So, in the beginning, that will probably look like a
bath of some kind every night and four or five applications a day of the
topical products, and then working down from there over the weeks and
months.
Just keep that in mind upfront when you’re wondering how you’re ever
going to keep all this up because if you start off strong and stay on it,
you won’t have to keep it up. You’ll be doing less and less as time goes
on.
So again, to recap, in Bacteria, Fungi and Inflammation, we talked about
the possibility your skin’s biome just needs to be rebalanced on the
external side. And starting with some skin biotic products for low to
medium grade cases, that that might not be a bad idea. If that works,
great. If not, it’s time to start thinking about antipathogenic and anti-
inflammatory strategies. Get a good rotation of the topical products we
talked about and a good rotation of the baths, and you’ll be off to the
races.
Teddy: At some point when you’re good and sure you’ve completely
cleared the infection, you’ll want to circle back to the skin biotic products
again to rebalance that skin biome so that your skin won’t be susceptible
to infection going forward.
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All right. I think that about covers it for lesson three: Bacteria, Fungi and
Inflammation. We hope that gave some good insight as to exactly what a
big part of this problem is and how to approach it. Head over to see Dr.
Eric and Sabrina’s take on all of this, and you’ll have the most complete
perspective on how to look at all of it. And we’ll see you back here for
lesson four.
BACTERIA, FUNGI AND
INFLAMMATION
Guest: Eric and Sabrina Zielinski
Dr. Zielinski: Hello, and welcome to Lesson 3: Bacteria, Fungi and

Inflammation. In this lesson, you’re going to learn about the role candida
plays in skin disease, yeast infections and how to avoid them, the best
essential oils to use for candida.
And we’ll wrap up with a wonderful DIY segment with Mama Z to show
you how to make our triple threat infection-fighting protocol and Mama
Z’s skin healing serum, which are our go-to’s for all things related to
eczema, psoriasis, and skin disease. Ready to get started? Me too.
I’d like to set the stage for this lesson by telling you a true story. Several
years ago, a woman approached me at the end of one of my live
essential oil classes. Her hands were wrapped in bandages, and she hid
them very carefully. Obviously, embarrassed about how she looked. She
told me that every month during her monthly cycle, her hands broke out
in oozing bleeding sores.
From what I could tell, she suffered from a rare condition called
autoimmune progesterone dermatitis or APD—still very much
misunderstood. It is suspected that APD is a rare skin response to rising
progesterone levels during the premenstrual phase of a woman’s cycle
that occurs right before menses.
The way it looks and presents for each woman is different. But skin
rashes of varying degrees are a consistent symptom as hormone
levels ebb and flow. The outbreak usually resolves within a few days of
menstruation only to reoccur during the next cycle.
This poor woman suffered from a litany of other symptoms, including
brain fog, thinning hair, adrenal fatigue, chronic fatigue, insomnia, low
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libido, and compromised gut health. But what really threw me for a
loop were the sores on her hands. I had never seen anything like it in
my life. And evidently, neither had all of medical doctors, chiropractors,
nutritionists, and functional medicine practitioners she visited.
Unfortunately, her hands never recovered between cycles. So her
only recourse was to wrap them up in soft bandages nearly every day,
literally unable to even grasp a pencil because of the pain. Also, she was
a mother of two very young children at the time. So just think about how
this affected her quality of life.
Literally, changing diapers in excruciating pain, not being able to color
with her daughter, and barely able to bathe and get herself ready in
the morning was her normal way of life. She had virtually every medical
test done that her doctors could think of and was ultimately prescribed
countless cortisone creams and supplements but to no avail.
She told me she actually almost went bankrupt paying for the medical
bills, prescriptions, and mass amount of supplements she was taking.
At one point, she was on an $800 per month supplement protocol—
completely strapped for cash.
She asked for my recommendation about which one or two essential
oils she could try. She can only afford one or two, she said. I was so
moved by her condition that I offered to coach her for free. I really coach
people because I’m so busy writing and researching, and running our
online biblical health ministry, but she was at her wit’s end, and I felt the
Lord guide me to help her. And I’m grateful that I did.
When I started to work with her, the first thing I recommended was that
she stopped taking all supplements for a short season to give her body a
break. I am of the opinion that the body needs time to heal when it is in
such a heightened state of autoimmunity and chronic inflammation. And
I found that water fast and simple detoxes are a great way to naturally
cleanse the gut and help reset the immune system.
There are a variety of strategies that work in such situations, including
monitored water fast, simple detox protocols, and they don’t require
mass amounts of supplements. But before you start one, be sure to
work with a trained healthcare professional to develop a detox protocol
that works for you because this is not something you want to undertake
without professional guidance, particularly if you suffer from candida
overgrowth and severe eczema, psoriasis, and skin disease.
During her cleanse, she implemented some very strategic and targeted
essential oil formulations to facilitate gut health and boost her immune
system. She applied Mama Z’s skin healing serum topically over her
sores. And we’ll show you how to make that recipe in just a bit.
She enjoyed a version of my sleepy time blend at night and carefully
consumed antifungal, antioxidant-rich, and anti-inflammatory essential
oils. The results were profound. In fact, she called it a miracle.
Within a couple of weeks, her skin condition was completely resolved,
and every symptom she suffered from had improved. She started to
sleep better. Her sex drive returned, the brain fog disappeared. Her
hair stopped falling out. She didn’t have to drink a pot of coffee to get
through the day. And she literally felt like a new woman.
After her cleanse, we implemented an elimination diet where she slowly
incorporated safe foods like lightly steamed vegetables into her diet
while completely omitting all grains, dairy, and sugar. Now, my opinion,
the root of her problem was candida overgrowth, which is a naturally
occurring yeast that naturally lives in your mouth and digestive tract
along with billions of other forms of bacteria.
Not only did all of her symptoms steer me to that conclusion, but her
blood results confirmed it. This actually surprised her because she
hadn’t had a yeast infection or other obvious signs of too much candida.
Now, at this point, it’s important to note that there are known bacterial
and viral infections that have been linked to eczema, psoriasis, and
skin disease. And I’ll refer you to the other videos in this lesson to learn
more. We also cover how to use essential oils for a variety of bacterial
and viral infections in our new book, The Essential Oils Apothecary, and
you will want to pick up a copy if you’re interested in learning about that.
For our discussion, however, I’d like to cover the candida issue because
not all men and women present candida overgrowth in the same way.
And it is a prime component to eczema, psoriasis, and skin disease.
Women typically don’t go to their doctor unless they get a vaginal yeast
infection. And guys don’t normally think of it unless they are suffering
from jock itch. And this puts people at risk of developing a systemic
problem.
If you suffer from a combination of the symptoms below, you may
have candida infection, and you need to get this investigated: brain fog,
chronic fatigue, foul body odor, insomnia, low libido, sugar cravings,
seasonal allergies, vaginal yeast infections, or jock itch.
Vaginal yeast infections are one of the most common reasons women
visit their healthcare provider. In fact, more than 75% of women will
suffer from a vaginal yeast infection at least once during their lifetime.
And 50% will have a reoccurring episode. Unfortunately, these numbers
are only expected to increase because candida thrives in so many
environments.
Here’s some things you need to know about candida. Candida thrives in
acidic environments. Candida feeds on sugar and flourishes in patients
with high sugar diets and uncontrolled diabetes. Candida has a tendency
to develop in immune-compromised patients with HIV or who are
undergoing chemotherapy.
Candida is more likely to thrive in an individual who take antibiotics as
the medicine wipes out friendly bacteria, as well as pathogenic bacteria.
And don’t forget, with no friendly bacteria to keep it in check, candida,
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like all harmful bacteria and viruses, flourish. Candida is also triggered
by vaginal dryness and tightness during sex.
And which is very shocking, certain strains of candida have developed
antifungal drug resistance, making it untreatable in many cases.
Typically experienced as genital itching, burning, and sometimes a thick
vaginal discharge that resembles cottage cheese, the symptoms of a
yeast infection are similar to other genital infections. So it’s important to
visit your healthcare provider if you have any of these symptoms.
In most cases, infection is caused by the candida that is already living
in a woman’s body. It is actually quite normal for candida to exist in the
mouth, GI tract, and vagina without any complications.
The problem occurs when something goes awry, such as an increase
in vaginal acidity, hormonal imbalance, or undue stress, which
compromises the immune system. In some cases, candida infections can
be sexually transmitted, but that is rare.
And here’s where things get tricky.Urinary tract infections or UTIs are
another common ailment that many women suffer from. The good news
is that essential oils are an extremely effective natural therapy for these
painful infections. Applying a 5% dilution of traditional antibacterial oils
like clove, lemongrass, oregano, or thyme of the abdomen, two to three
times a day, can do a wonderful job stopping the infection.
[10:00]
And by the way, a 5% dilution is 30 drops of essential oil mixed with
one ounce of a carrier oil. Sage is also a recommended therapy. In
a study comparing Basil, lemongrass, and sage essential oils against
microorganisms isolated from urinary tract infection, sage performed
the best with 100% efficacy against Klebsiella and Enterobacter species.
Ninety-six percent against E. coli, 83% against Proteus mirabilis, and
75% against Morganella morganii. In a study evaluating Staph aureus
and E. coli, which are both bacteria that cause urinary tract infections,
palmarosa oil was found to be an effective remedy.
Unfortunately, rather than targeting UTIs naturally, far too many doctors
prescribe antibiotics, which put women at risk of developing a yeast
infection since these drugs destroy the healthy bacteria that protect the
vagina from candida overgrowth.
Remember, your human body contains approximately 30 trillion bacteria
and about one quadrillion viruses. You need plenty of friendly bacteria
to keep the harmful bacteria in check. Multi-drug resistant candida is on
the rise because antifungal drugs have been overused and are all but
useless at resolving the root cause of the infection.
Couple this with a highly acidic diet that’s rich in sugar, grains, and dairy,
and the perfect environment for candida outbreaks exist in women
all over the world. To complicate matters, the situation has become
somewhat grim because antifungals are known to cause nervous system
damage.
Even though the FDA has finally issued a warning against using some
of these drugs for uncomplicated infections, doctors still do so every
day. So be sure to question your doctor if she prescribes these drugs.
The simple solution is use antibiotics, antifungals only when necessary.
That’s easier said than done.
The truth is this is when choosing the right healthcare provider is
key. You should be able to work with your doctor to manage simple
infections naturally first using essential oils and herbal remedies. Then
if you don’t get the results you’re looking for, consider more aggressive
approach like using pharmaceuticals.
It’s important to point out that most of the essential oil
recommendations out there for candida focus on treating vaginal
infections or thrush, not systemic candida overgrowth. However, that’s
not to say that essential oil protocols can help. But in my opinion, you’ll
be better served if you use essential oils in conjunction with significant
dietary changes as your first line of defense.
This is particularly true if you’re trying to treat a vaginal yeast infection
or oral thrush. And we’ll cover more about food in less than six. If these
are conditions, you suffer from, using cool or warm compresses can
help you considerably. You can learn more and watch Mama Z, and I
make this remedy in less than four.
Now, going back to essential oils, we have seen dramatic results when
using these seven. First, tea tree, the go-to antifungal oil. Tea tree has
a long history as a skin treatment and air purifying agent and has been
used with great success to treat fungal infections, especially candida.
Second, we have lavender which works synergistically with tea tree to
combat fungal infections but don’t discount lavender by itself. Even
though it’s extremely gentle, it’s quite potent.
Third is thyme. Broad-spectrum antibiotics and antifungals have failed
to stop the candida epidemic. So researchers have been investigating
natural broad-spectrum alternatives, including essential oils.
A study out of Poland discovered that both tea tree and thyme oils have
the uncanny ability to change the morphology and metabolism of yeast
enzymes, suggesting that these essential oils can significantly impact
candida spread and that candida cannot become resistant to these oils.
Fourth is peppermint. In 2010, one of the most exhaustive studies to
date evaluated how 30 different essential oils inhibited the growth of
candida in-vitro or cells in a Petri dish. Of those tested, 12 were found
to be ineffective. However, 18 were found to be effective. Of these,
eucalyptus and peppermint oils stood out. At concentrations as low as
0.15% dilution, both showed significant fungicidal properties.
Fifth is geranium. Specifically testing how geranium helped mice with
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yeast infections, researchers have discovered that the oil had a minimal
effect when applied alone. However, when used in combination with
vaginal washing, the infection decreased significantly, thus stressing the
importance of keeping your skin and genitals clean.
Six is lemon. Truly a jack and Jacqueline of all trades, lemon has
performed well against drug-resistant strains of a number of bacteria
and fungi, including MRSA and candida. Additionally, multiple
commercial lemon oils have been shown to contain a broad spectrum
ability, killing a variety of fungal strains.
The key takeaway from these studies about lemon is this: limonene is
a monocyclic terpene. It is the main ingredient in most lemon essential
oils found on the market. However, the antifungal activity depends on
the content of action generated monoterpenes. The higher the content,
the better the fungicidal effects that were observed.
So if you want to battle candida, try to get a chemical analysis
of the brand of essential oil before buying to be sure it contains
these constituents. You can usually find this information on the oil
manufacturer’s website or just by calling their customer support.
And at last but certainly not least is clove. Rich in eugenol, a chemical
component of plants with antiseptic properties. Clove is a superhero
at killing microorganisms. Research has shown that its power against
candida strains is so potent that it can reduce the fungi to near-zero
levels, including antifungal medication-resistant strains.
But before you apply topically over sensitive areas of your body,
however, take great caution and be sure to dilute it properly. I
recommend starting at a 1% dilution or six drops of clove mixed with
one ounce of a carrier oil and working your way up as long as no
irritation occurs. Clove is powerful and can seriously aggravate your skin,
so be careful.
In an attempt to determine which essential oils work best synergistically
against microorganisms like candida, researchers are starting to get
creative in their testing. Now, keep in mind that as you branch out and
expand your medicine cabinet to treat candida and other skin infections,
certain essential oils are inherently safer and more effective than others.
The essential oils that contain linalool, borneol, geraniol, citronellal,
and menthol are a good place to start. Oils rich in linalool include
clary sage, lavender, Lavandin, and Ylang-ylang. Oils rich in borneol
include Lavandin, lavender, and Rosemary. Oils rich in geraniol include
palmarosa, thyme, and Melissa. Oils rich in citronellal include rose,
geranium, citronella, and Melissa. And peppermint is a popular oil rich in
menthol.
Now, like we’ve said all along, if you’re on this SAD or standard American
diet and on recurring cycles of antibiotics or dealing with unresolved
chronic stress in your life—and who isn’t at this point—all common
triggers of candida and skin infection, then using essential oils to beat
skin disease is like taking one step forward and two steps back.
A completely holistic approach is a must if you want to fully resolve
eczema, psoriasis, and skin disorders. Now, sure, essential oils can
help, but they are only one piece of the organic gluten-free naturally
sweetened by. Well, that’s it. That’s a wrap. Now, let’s make some DIY
goodies with Mama Z from our book, The Essential Oils Apothecary.
“I just wanted to let you all know that I tried Mama Z’s skin healing
serum on my husband’s shingles a while back, and it helped
tremendously. It soothes the rash more quickly than pharmaceuticals,
and his osteopathic doctor agreed. His boss got shingles a while later,
and he used the serum as well, and it helped with healing the rash and
the pain.
I recently gave some to a friend who came down with shingles, and she
said it was so soothing that it helped with the pain as well. Awesome
stuff. Blessings, Donna. I made and used your psoriasis eczema
salve, AKA Mama Z’s skin healing serum, and it made the area more
comfortable and eventually cleared it up totally. It took a while, two
or three months, for it to totally clear, but I had let the problem go for
months on my foot. Then I tried some other salve on before I found your
recipe.
So my foot was in pretty bad shape. I went to a dermatologist, and they
wanted me to use a cortisone ointment that damaged your skin. So you
can only use it for a small amount of time anyway. They also said the
problem would just come back. Well, they didn’t know whether it was
eczema or psoriasis or perhaps some sort of allergic reaction.
[20:00]
And it didn’t make sense to damage my skin with an ointment, so I
started researching the problem. My cousin’s son had a foot problem,
and his doctor had given him the cortisone ointment. And I happened to
have taken some salve with me when I went to where they lived, and it
worked well for him, and now he wants more. Thank you for your help,
Shelly.”
“Hi, Eric. Hi, Sabrina. Yes. I have been blessing people with the healing
serum for your skin, and the two people I’ve made it say that their
skin feels like silk, and the inflammation and redness have gone. The
scratches have stopped, all the itchiness. The oil has helped my niece
with her dermatitis and her eczema. The face moisturizer has been
great.
Muscular pain has been relieved with my mom and brother, shoulder
pain. Wintergreen, coconut oil with Rosemary, de-stressed friends
enjoying diffuser of orange peppermint neurally. She just sat into the
room and de-stressed—Donna. Just three of the countless testimonials
we’ve gotten because of this recipe.”
Now, this is all in the context of bacterial, fungal infections, and
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inflammation. Now, as we’ll talk later on in this lesson about ingesting
essential oils, which are with our triple-threat protocol, which is a great
way of combating viruses, bacteria, and fungi internally, what do you do
for topical?
This recipe is Mama Z’s brainchild, and there’s going to be three
modifications to it. Pay very close attention to everything because this is
the basis. This is the basis for healing your skin.
And quite frankly, regardless of what skin condition that you’re battling,
whether it’s eczema, psoriasis, shingles, as you heard, rashes, simple
dermatitis, or as you hear from her father’s story, skin cancer, we want
you to consider using this because at the very least, it is soothing.
Soothing inflammation, bursting, and God-willing, it will bring healing to
your body. So without further ado, look at all this stuff.
Sabrina: Okay. We have a few things here on this counter, so we’re
going to talk about it. I’m going to give you the recipes as it relates to a
one-ounce portion. However, when you go to make this on your own, if
you only use one ounce total, it’s very hard to whip into something like
the magic bullet because it just spits it around, and it’s just not enough
material.
So, in this case, we have four ounces of two different things. So we’re
going to end up having an eight-ounce batch, but I’m going to give you
the recipe for what one-ounce batch. So back this train up. Where did
this come from?
And I had had a chemical burn when I was younger with over-the-
counter skin products that really ate my face. And I started to do
research on what I could do to help heal my skin because it was so
traumatic.
And it was at a time when I was in middle school. So it was very tough
to have scabs all over my face and utilizing essential oils and aloe at the
time before I used coconut oil. Also, intermixing vitamin A and E with
those oils ended up helping to clear my skin and all of the scarring.
Well, fast forward years later, we live in Georgia now, but we were just
visiting, and we went and hiked up Stone Mountain. I did not realize that
because Georgia is closer to the equator than Michigan, that the sun
would be hotter. So we went up on our voyage, and you can tell by Dr.
Z’s skin that he can handle lots of extra sun exposure, where for me, I
was a tomato. And when I say tomato, it was a tomato.
I thought, oh no, I’m going to peal. And this is bad. And we’re going to be
here for another week. What am I going to do? So I started researching,
and I found that Bragg apple cider vinegar was not just good for bug
bites after they happened before you put on essential oils to calm that.
But it was also good to gently exfoliate the skin and normalize the pH so
that it can heal.
Dr. Zielinski: So you are putting vinegar on a sunburn?
Sabrina: I know. It seems backwards.
Dr. Zielinski: Now, that’s acidic. Doesn’t it burn?
Sabrina: It doesn’t. Actually, it’s tingly at first, and then it completely
soothes. So I started doing that in all of those different areas. And then
I had also researched. I knew aloe was good, and I knew that lavender
was a great oil to use, but then mixing the coconut oil was key because
we needed those antifungal, antibacterial properties as well to keep the
surface moist.
So I started just hand whipping that stuff with the essential oils. And
wouldn’t you know, that combination with the Bragg apple cider vinegar
and those oils, I didn’t even peel. Within a couple of days, it turned to a
lighter tan, and it was great. Well then, fast forward years later, my dad
came to visit us, and he said, well, let me tell you about the project. And
he was slathering this cream all over the place.
And he says, yeah, they say I have skin cancer and this. And so I look at
the container and then the container, the side effects was that it could
cause cancer. And so I was like, do you know it says it causes cancer or
can cause cancer? And he said, well, no. I said, well, how long have you
been doing this? He said six months.
And I’m like, that’s a long time to be doing something with no after-
effects. So I said, do you want to--
Dr. Zielinski: No results because it looked just as bad.
Sabrina: Yeah. And I said, well, do you want to be healed? And he’s like,
well, yeah. So I go get the Bragg apple cider vinegar. And he was like--
and I couldn’t use a cotton circle on him. I needed to use a paper towel.
So when I did, he’s like, oh, I don’t want to be smelling like a salad. And
so I started to treat the areas, and I whipped it up in the magic bullet
and started putting it on. And I said you’re not going to smell like a salad
when we’re done. So slathered it up. And the two spots on his hands
within two days almost completely cleared as far as the open wounds
and stuff.
And then, within two weeks, everything on his forearms had healed.
Well, at the time, then we’re good. Well, he goes back to his doctor. They
ended up burning some different spots. And I’m like, you went back?
And he said, yeah, but this time he’s like, look at this. It’s flaking, and it
doesn’t look good. And it really looked really fungal.
So then, that’s when we came up with the fungal protocol. And we’ll talk
about each of those right before we use them or right before we talk
about the oils. And again, within a few days during that week when they
were here, the chuffiness all was gone, and it looked a hundred times
better.
So from there, that’s when we started looking at other oils that were
good for skin and kind of came up with our maximum strength. So that’s
137
kind of a little backstory on all of this. So one of the questions that I get
all the time is, well, you’re using Aloe Vera gel, but can I use the real
Aloe Vera? And I said, well, yes, of course. And I remember being at your
mom’s house, she had one of her old friends came by, and she had
some terrible spots of eczema.
And so your mom had this aloe plant near the window. I knew she had
coconut oil. We weren’t planning on making salves or anything or skin
healing serum. So I was able to take the aloe leaves, filet them, scrape
them into the container and then use them the exact same way.
Now, a little caveat on that. It is going to go bad faster. You do have
to store that in the refrigerator. I purposely do store our skin healing
serum in the refrigerator because if you don’t, it will eventually separate.
The oil will separate from the aloe and the essential oils.
But what you do is usually I carve out a circle, which I’ll show you with a
spoon. And then you take it from the fridge, kind of warm it in your hand
after you’ve done your apple cider vinegar, and then put it directly on
the spots.
Another way that you can use it is if you do a detox bath, especially if
you have spots all over your body, psoriasis, eczema, any of those type
of things. And then, once you get out of the bathtub, using the apple
cider vinegar. And I’ve been known to also put it on a paper towel and
do the whole body.
I do like the organic cotton circles the best. And then you’re going to use
that skin healing serum right on it. Okay. So I’m actually going to put you
to work today as well when we get to that point.
But I want to show you the difference between coconut oil. So you’re
going to need to get some raw organic coconut oil and some aloe Vera
gel, or you can use the plant. So this is when I’ve made a hot water bath
in the sink, and I’ve soaked it. It will go right to a liquid.
Now, if I didn’t, it would be a solid. So when you go to look at your skin
healing serum, when you’ve put it in the refrigerator, it looks like this.
It gets nice and solid, but it’s homogenous. So you don’t have to worry
about it. And again, I’m going to stick my spoon in there. I always carve
myself out.
[30:10]
And when I make it as gifts, I kind of carve that, so I stir it for them. And
then you’re going to want to store it in the refrigerator. I like to use glass,
but I did put one of the ones that were plastic out here because this is
something that I don’t mind if it is in the diaper bag. And I’ll just restir it
with my finger because we go through it enough. Then you can use that,
of course.
All right. Now I’m going to show you the first one. So when you use the
first mixture, the one that’s going to be like our regular one, you’re going
to want to get out your lavender and your frankincense essential oils. So
for one ounce, you’re going to do five drops of lavender and two drops
of frankincense for that one ounce.
Now, if you’re using it for fungal infections, you’re going to do four drops
of lavender, two drops of frankincense, and two drops of tea tree in that
same one-ounce portion. Now, if you’re doing your maximum strength,
you’re going to do four drops of lavender. You’re going to do two drops
of frankincense, two drops of tea tree, one drop of Helichrysum, one
drop of sandalwood. I like the Hawaiian sandalwood for this.
So these are all of your ingredients. Now because I’m doing so much
more, we’ve got today four ounces of coconut oil. Then we’ve got four
ounces of our organic Aloe Vera gel. We’re going to put that in.
Dr. Zielinski: And all these oils traditionally like Helichrysum, for
example, also known as Immortelle, the fountain of youth, so we see a
lot of these oils being used regularly in skin care anti-aging products, a
lot of your DIY. And that was really the motivation behind, okay, what do
we mix together?
And it was kind of trial by error, but lavender as a foundation for virtually
everything that we did because that was part of Mama Z’s healing salve
when she was 14 when she burned her face. And we just kept on adding
to it.
Sabrina: Absolutely. So we’re going to do 20 drops of your lavender,
and we’re going to do eight drops of frankincense in this. But I’m going
to just let you know, you can tell this is an older container. You can see
some of the wear on it. So eventually, this one’s going to look like that
too, but it just happens to be brand new.
When my grandpa passed away, he had just bought a few years before a
brand new magic bullet. And I inherited both of my grandparents’ magic
bullets. And so I’ve got endless supplies.
Dr. Zielinski: Well, the essential oils will actually do this, by the way. And
that’s the thing. And I didn’t know that about our Vitamix, and I love my
Matcha green tea, but you add turmeric and cinnamon, and you add
some--
Sabrina: Yes. It doesn’t look the same anymore.
Dr. Zielinski: No, but it’s all right because it’s functional. But yeah, just
know that really this is the clear danger of why we don’t want to store
highly concentrated essential oil. Yeah. We don’t want to store it. This is
very diluted, but if you’re going to store a highly concentrated essential
oil preparation in plastic, it’ll destroy the plastic. So this is diluted, and it’s
safe.
Sabrina: Yeah. Okay. So we’ve got everything in there. As you can see,
it’s clear, but it’s going to come out like a light white clear beige.
Dr. Zielinski: Now, what if someone doesn’t have a magic bullet? What
are some project-friendly or just whatever?
139
Sabrina: So you can increase the amount that you’re using. Remember
it’s equal parts raw organic melted coconut oil in a hot water bath with
Aloe Vera or Aloe Vera gel. So you can always up that. So if you have
a blender or something of that nature, you can do it in there. You can
hand whip it, but it isn’t going to look quite the same.
It might be lumpy. It might be different. It’s still going to be as effective,
though. So go ahead and open these containers, these ones right here.
And the lids are perfect.
Dr. Zielinski: You can still label. It helps, doesn’t it?
Sabrina: Yes.
Dr. Zielinski: It helps so you know what it is. That’s for on-the-go.
And again, if you’re going to use plastic, try to use a PET plastic or a
medicinal-grade plastic because again, some of the junky dollar store
plastics will just-- they’re junkie. I mean, they’re a dollar for a reason.
And those weak petrochemicals in those plastics will break down, and
you might actually find a hole burned through by the essential oils after
time. So always use high-grade plastic if you’re going to use-- like this.
Again, this is an aromatherapy type blue. You’ll see a lot of this in your
favorite aromatherapy stores. And this is, of course, glass.
Sabrina: So I wrote on the top “fresh”. If I use the aloe, the fresh aloe,
I’m always going to mark “fresh” so that I know use that first.
Dr. Zielinski: Oh, because of the fresh aloe.
Sabrina: Correct.
Dr. Zielinski: And we already put the essential oils in?
Sabrina: Yeah. I put it in right away.
Dr. Zielinski: Oh, good.
Sabrina: Yeah, exactly. So now what I want to show you is-- so if
you have problems with any of your fungal issues, you could take--
remember, we’re still doing equal parts of aloe, but you could instead do
three ounces of coconut oil and one ounce of something else.
You’re going to want to add that organic evening Primrose, one ounce
of that. Let’s say you have some extra healing going on. I’ll do a half an
ounce of the straight vitamin E and half an ounce of rosehip seed oil
because then you’re going to get that A and E healing properties as well.
Dr. Zielinski: So we just made the skin healing serum. The protocol is to
first what? Exfoliate with apple cider vinegar.
Sabrina: Or they came out with-- this is a concentrate. So it has some
honey. It has some cayenne pepper. And I would consider this an extra
stripe. When you’re talking about baby skin, sometimes they can take
this, or I actually will go 50-50 with distilled water. And you always want
to do a patch test on your skin to make sure that your skin can handle it.
What I’ve found is even though I have sensitive skin, this has been,
and it was almost by accident that I tried this for the last year, but this
concentrate is amazing. And it has a little bit of lemon juice in it as well.
It’s a little stickier. So if you miss the places with the skin healing serum
afterward, you’ll find them the next time because it’ll be a little sticky
to the touch, but I like this a lot. And it is kind of like the extra-strength
version. And this is what we use as our toner even at home here.
Dr. Zielinski: You made a good point. You made a good point about
skin patch test. So you know how if you’re going to clean the carpet, the
carpet cleaner instructions say, hey, first check an inconspicuous corner
just in case it stains. And if it doesn’t stain the carpet, then you clean the
rest of the carpet. That’s essentially the same concept of a skin patch
test.
So what we would advise you to do is go through this protocol on a non-
affected area of your skin. And hopefully, top of the hand or the top of
the foot typically are areas that most people like to do skin patch test
because it’s a strong-- it’s not sensitive. Your hand typically isn’t sensitive
like an underarm or under breast or groin area might be. So try, and
if your skin-- I mean, you just have to find a non-affected area on your
body.
Key for babies, that’s the other thing. Always check this on a non-
affected part of the baby’s body, especially. And what you’re looking for
is any adverse reaction, and no reaction is what we’re looking for. We’re
looking for no pain, no rashes, no anything. The baby, no fussing, no
crying.
And so to reiterate, you don’t want to use straight apple cider vinegar on
a baby. You could go 50-50, one to one ratio. So a quarter cup water, a
quarter cup vinegar, mix it up, and that will still do it. And that should be
okay for baby’s skin.
And then you try the skin healing serum. All right. So check first. And the
thing is this, here’s the thing, what if you go through all this effort and
make all this, you spend all the money and time and wow, it maybe give
you an adverse reaction. Maybe your skin is so sensitive it can’t handle
it. Don’t worry about it.
Put a nice label on it, put a bow around it, give it to a friend as a gift. Or
put it in your fridge because it will last months in the fridge. And maybe
going through some of the other protocols we’re talking on in this class,
your skin might get to that point where it’s not so sensitive, then you
could do it.
But I’ll tell you, we have never ever heard of anyone, and this is no
exaggeration. We’ve had tens of thousands of people use this recipe. We
have not heard one person say they couldn’t use it. All right.
The apple cider vinegar is essentially the only variable that some people
maybe, maybe, not be too sensitive, but the skin healing serum, good
141
to go. So what do you do with this thing? And what is this? It looks like a
cactus. It looks like I can-- Someone is getting the spanking.
Sabrina: You can grow this yourself. Or you can buy it at the store, at
the health food store. And I’ve seen them right at the store. So what
you’re going to do, I’m going to put you to work.
Dr. Zielinski: I’m going to do it.
Sabrina: Yes. I want you to do it so that you can show people how it’s
done.
Dr. Zielinski: And actually, I’ve never done this. I’ve used the knife
before. I’ve never fileted an aloe.
Sabrina: Okay. You’re going to cut the ends off first.
Dr. Zielinski: Cut the ends. And the angle? Straight?
[40:00]
Sabrina: Yeah. You want to leave as good-- you only take bare
necessities off. Now that one.
Dr. Zielinski: All right.
Sabrina: Wow. Look, you’re wasting all that, dude.
Dr. Zielinski: Okay. I got in trouble. Don’t waste. I wasn’t sure where it
stopped. All right. But look, we got a little extra. And that’s gooey.
Sabrina: Yes. Now you’re going to cut it down the center.
Dr. Zielinski: Down the center? So equal? All right.
Sabrina: Yeah. Just equal down the center.
Dr. Zielinski: All right. Let me show people how we are doing this.
Sabrina: This is my sous chef anyways. So good. Look at you following
directions.
Dr. Zielinski: I don’t know. Wow. That’s beautiful. Oh, look at that.
Sabrina: It is. You want to know the story behind this one? I was moving
our aloe plant up to the deck, and I was messing around with it, and it
snapped off, and I was like, oh, I need this anyways.
Dr. Zielinski: Oh, look. How cool?
Sabrina: Yes.
Dr. Zielinski: Can you see that? Can you see how clear that is?
Sabrina: Yeah. It’s super cool.
Dr. Zielinski: That is neat.
Sabrina: Okay. So what you’re going to want to do is use your little
spoon here, and you’re going to put all of that--
Dr. Zielinski: That’s like the gel. It’s like a jellyfish.
Sabrina: Yeah.
Dr. Zielinski: Okay. Yeah. But you spoil me. I’m not allowed to do
anything in the kitchen unless it’s under camera teaching a class. She
doesn’t allow me. She’s a little territorial.
Sabrina: He tries to go in the corner by the sink and the trash can. And
that’s the hottest spot in this whole house.
Dr. Zielinski: So whenever I’m allowed to go in the kitchen, I’m like,
sweet. I could practice.
Sabrina: And he always waits until I have a mom’s day.
Dr. Zielinski: All right. I got a spoon. So what?
Sabrina: You’re going to get right down to that skin. You’re going to
scrape it all into this bowl right here.
Dr. Zielinski: Okay. So what’s a good idea? Like this.
Sabrina: I would scrape it on here and then put it-- Yeah. Just like that.
Dr. Zielinski: Okay. How about we do it like this.
Sabrina: You get it as clean as possible. Don’t waste one little bit.
Dr. Zielinski: Well, there is a lot.
Sabrina: I know.
Dr. Zielinski: This is cool. So you could buy aloe plants at the store?
Sabrina: Right. Or you can even buy-- sometimes they have just the
leaves just like this.
Dr. Zielinski: Oh, we’ve seen that at some of our favorite health food
stores. This is really jelly.
Sabrina: Yeah. Don’t waste.
Dr. Zielinski: I’m not going to waste. We’ll pick it up. Okay. So fun. And
this will go bad quicker, right?
Sabrina: Yes.
Sabrina: I mean, basically what happens is if you-- and don’t worry
about that little piece. If you put your aloe leaf in the refrigerator,
eventually, it’s going to get harder and harder and lose more and more
water substance. So you just need to use it.
Dr. Zielinski: Having this cool though, and we’ll end with this, having this
in the refrigerator is wonderful, especially for those burns, especially
sunburns and rashes or rug burn. We have five kids. It’s like every day,
no joke. Every day it’s like we use this pretty much.
Sabrina: They are like, you need to treat me. You need to treat me.
Dr. Zielinski: We love them, but it’s so soothing because you get it out
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of the fridge, and it takes two and a half seconds for it to go onto your
palm and for it to liquefy. Like that’s how wonderful this is. So we always
love having a little jar in our fridge, and it’s so soothing. And, of course,
it’s healing. We love that, but it just gives that immediate relief, especially
if you want that sort of immediate relief.
And by the way, you could use this as a base for a number of things
like, let’s say you’re dealing with pain and a drop of-- again, I would be
cautious about using peppermint on top of eczema or psoriasis. You got
to work yourself into that or just see if it works for you. But this sort of
recipe works for a million things, headaches, pain. You could use some
wintergreen.
Roman chamomile is another good one that’s very soothing, and that is
wonderfully safe for kids. It can help with sleep. This is just a good base
as a whole. We talked about Mama Z’s oil base. That’s a fantastic base
for virtually every DIY, but this adds a skin healing component to it that
we just encourage you to experiment with.
So you’ve gotten three variations. You got the base recipe. You got the
fresh aloe variation. You have the fungal infection variation and the
maximum strength variation. What do you use that for? Well, if you have
a condition like high-grade eczema or something that you just need a
little more support with, try that as well.
Sabrina: And if you ask any of my kids, they always need the maximum
strength. They are like they want it.
Dr. Zielinski: And five band-aids. I don’t care how big the scratches and
boo-boo is.
Sabrina: It’s no blood, no band-aid.
Dr. Zielinski: Anything else? Because this has been wonderfully-- I
encourage people to maybe watch this one again because there’s a lot
of information on this one. Of course, we’ve been putting up slides and
the recipes to make this super easy for you because we don’t want any
confusion. And we want you to feel confident.
Like this is one of those like you could do it off the top of your head
once you do it once or twice. And listening to those testimonials that we
shared at the top of this lesson, it’s like, wow. And our hope and prayer
truly that this has helped transform our lives, our skin health, and our
followers online, our Natural Living Family.
Our hope and prayer is that it will help you and your family. And at the
very least, give you a little symptom relief so you can sleep better at
night or maybe, by the grace of God, help you completely heal. How
wonderful would that be? This is us.
Sabrina: Okay. Yes.
Dr. Zielinski: Well, Mama Z’s skin healing serum.
Without a shadow of a doubt, the number one most controversial topic
in aromatherapy is ingestion—whether or not in how someone should
consume essential oils. So I want to preface this by saying that of all the
essential oils manufactured on the planet, up to 50% are used by the
food and flavor industry.
Those natural flavorings, those artificial flavorings, which are essentially
a synthetic knockoff version of the essential oil, that’s what gives our
drinks and our foods that you buy at the store that flavor to it.
So the concern really is dosing because we know that there are essential
oils and synthetic versions of essential oils in food that people are
consuming all day long, but we’re talking parts per million, even parts
per billion.
So when we’re looking at how to combat infection and we know infection
is a critical component for anyone trying to heal from eczema, psoriasis,
skin disorders, and chronic disease as a whole, we know that topical
use and inhalation isn’t going to cut it. That’s where we need more of a
medicinal dose. All right.
So what I’m going to show you is the safest way of ingesting essential
oils to combat infection. And so this is our triple threat for bacterial,
fungal, and viral infections. And what I have here is my remedy that
we’re going to use gel capsules for. But before I do, I want to talk a little
bit about these essential oils and particularly one from my book.
One particular essential oil has a great profound effect on virtually all
infection, and that’s oregano. All right. So this is page 131 from The
Essential Oils Apothecary. And this chapter is actually the chronic fatigue
and fibromyalgia chapter. And the same information, which is the
beauty of God’s wisdom, the same information is applicable when it
comes to essentially any infection.
If you have an uncontrollable bacterial, viral, or fungal infection, it
doesn’t matter if it manifests through eczema, psoriasis. If it manifests
through fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue, or any other condition, it’s
essentially the same approach to how to remedy it. We want to get
those bad bugs out of there.
So this is page 131 in The Essential Oils Apothecary. Now, often referred to
as nature’s antibiotic, oregano oil is a top solution for all things related
to infection, whether bacterial, fungal, or viral. Because chronic fatigue,
fibromyalgia, and eczema, psoriasis, and many skin disorders can be
triggered after a viral attack, oregano oil may be a good choice if you can
link your condition to an infection.
Here’s the thing, though, and why this works is because the active
ingredient in oregano oil is carvacrol, also found in thyme and bergamot,
as well as several other plants. Carvacrol possesses a wide range of
biological activities, including antimicrobial, antioxidant, and anti-cancer
applications.
In fact, carvacrol’s antimicrobial activity is higher than that of any
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other compounds present in essential oils, and that’s worth repeating.
Carvacrol, which is a primary component in oregano, it has more
antimicrobial activity than any other essential oil. So if you’re looking at
combating an infection, oregano is the one you’re wanting to go to.
Oregano oil also has extremely high levels of antioxidants that help
protect the body from chronic conditions, and its protective powers
make it a superior choice for your immune system. So the reason
why we’re focusing on this, especially now, is who isn’t worried about
immune function?
And we see a lot of people battling chronic conditions and eczema,
psoriasis, and skin disorders because of immune dysfunction and
especially on the wake of the 2020, now 2021, health crisis is immune
focus is on everyone’s mind. And so this is a remedy that I highly
encourage people to consider, especially under the guidance of a
healthcare professional.
[50:00]
Now, the big disclaimer is you are ingesting essential oils in a medicinal
dose. So be very careful if you are taking any other medication. All right.
This book actually has a drug interaction chart. And I will say there are
some interactions that you need to be careful of, and there’s just too
many to list right now because I don’t know what sort of medications
you might be taking.
But if you are currently taking a medication, you need to look at that
first and get the book, check it out, make sure you’re not ingesting an
essential oil that could potentially interact with the drug in an adverse
way.
All right. That’s very important because this will have a medicinal
effect on your body. So what is the recipe? The recipe is two drops of
tea tree, one drop of oregano, one drop of lemongrass, and one drop
of thyme oil. Now, here’s how you do a capsule. Pretty easy, pretty
straightforward.
I like a double zero, “00”. All right. So when you type up on Amazon or
go to your natural health food store, this is a 00 size. You can also get 0,
one by itself, but I find that double zero is best, especially if you could
stomach it. I mean, it’s a little bit larger. It’s not a horse pill, but you
should be able to take it because you want a full amount of olive oil or a
good carrier oil to help with the body, absorb it better, and help with the
dilution.
All right. So one reason, why are we even putting this in a gel capsule?
Why aren’t we just putting it in our mouth? And why aren’t we just
putting it on top of water and drinking because I’ve seen that? I’ve seen
the YouTube videos. I’ve seen what the bloggers are writing out there in
the interwebs. Never ever put oils, essential oils in water and drink it or
never ever just put a drop in your mouth when you’re trying to battle an
infection.
Why? Because this is going to burn. This is going to burn your mouth,
burn your esophagus. Literally, they’re caustic. So they will burn your
mucus membranes, especially these oils. Now literally, a drop of
lavender, a drop of orange, isn’t going to kill you, but this will hurt you.
And so I’ve done that. And I remember I got sick several years ago, typed
up Dr. Google. What do I do?
Someone said, put a drop of tea tree and a drop of oregano in water and
drink it. And it was horrible. I actually developed acid reflux because it
burned so bad. Don’t do what I did. So that’s a lot of what I tell you is not
only based off of the research but based off of practical application.
These essential oils as well, especially oregano and thyme because of
the carvacrol, has been shown to kill MRSA. We’re talking antibiotic-
resistant bacteria that virtually no drug on the planet can touch. These
essential oils can help with that.
And we’ve helped many people combat and manage MRSA and others.
So what do you do is you just open up the gel capsule. So the key to this
gel capsule is when you swallow it, the essential oils are encapsulated in
it, and this gel capsule won’t be broken up until it reaches your gastric
juices.
And so, it helps the essential oils bypass the oral cavity and the
esophagus. And so that protects you. And so what you do is simply you
put two drops of tea tree and one drop of each of the essential oils, and
you fill it with olive oil. Now, your choice, if you have a steady hand, you
could easily put a drop, or you could use a pipette.
The key, though, is make sure you have one pipette for each essential
oil. Just pop off the lid, pipette, and then you need another one because
you don’t want to cross-contaminate. All right. I actually start here, tea
tree, two drops of tea tree, one drop of oregano.
One key to this remedy is this is made to order. All right. You do not
want to make this ahead of time because this is a vegan gel capsule that
will break down over time. Just like how the petrochemicals and plastic
will be broken down by the essential oils. You need to be very careful. So
you want to make this literally every time that you are going to consume
it.
And make things easier because this will get messy. I like my pipette
for my olive oil. This is real olive oil. You could go to our website,
naturallivingfamily.com, and learn more about olive oil. But I stress most
store-bought olive oils are synthetic, just like essential oils.
Most essential oils, most CBD, and most olive oil on the market,
especially that you could find at your stores are either synthetically
manufactured, they’re adulterated, or they’re not what you think it is.
They’re mislabeled. So that’s another reason why we teach what we do
to help you get the real deal.
So you simply put that. Again, that’s the thin longer end, and the wider,
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shorter end goes right on top. And this is your capsule. It’s that simple.
We recommend taking this once a day up to twice a day, especially if you
aren’t at the guidance of a healthcare professional. Make sure that this
is safe for you and make sure that there aren’t any drug interactions. I
have a drug interaction chart in the book, but this is it.
And I’ll tell you. For people that are battling infection, especially
infections that have been going on for a while and they’ve tried a
number of different things, this might be the ticket. And I want to
encourage you with one thing, a question that we get all the time,
especially with oregano, is okay research has shown it’s antibacterial.
Does that mean it kills all the bacteria in my gut? Does that mean it’s
going to cause a microbiome misbalance? The answer is no.
The wisdom of God and what he gave us through plants, research has
shown that essential oils have what’s known as, and they contain what’s
known as cell selectivity. Essential oils will literally target and kill the bad
pathogenic bacteria and leave the healthy bacteria alone. So you don’t
need to worry about any sort of gut condition or, again, ruining your
microbiome. It’s just wonderful.
Now, again, you can overdo anything. So we always recommend, at the
most, two doses a day for at least a max two, three weeks. Again, this is
not something I want people to take for the rest of their lives. And this is
really important. This is really important. What we teach and what we’re
trying to help people is use essential oils as an adjunct to their natural
living protocol. With medicine, without, that’s your choice.
And God bless you. I hope and pray that God gives you the solution that
you need. And as you learn about advanced strategies and protocols,
maybe you do need a medicinal approach for certain things. But one
thing we don’t want you to do is we don’t want you to feel like you need
to take this capsule every day for the rest of your life, nor do we want
you to take a drug every day for the rest of your life.
We’re hoping that through shorter time periods of using these essential
oils and at most one month-- I could tell you by and large research
suggests at the most, use this protocol for a month. Give your body a
couple of weeks off, and then you can go back to it if you need a second,
like a one-two punch.
But what you want to do is you want to give your body what your body
needs to heal itself. So I want to encourage you that using a higher
potent medicinal approach to combating infection, to help with eczema,
psoriasis, skin disease, chronic conditions, to get you to the point where
you won’t need that anymore because, to me, that’s hope. To me, that’s
healing. And I want to encourage you with that. All right.
If you have any questions, of course, reach out to us. We’re here to help
any which way we can. And this infection-fighting protocol may be the
solution that you’ve been praying for.
THE GUT-SKIN CONNECTION
Guest: Kiran Krishnan
Kiran: Hi, I’m Kiran Krishnan. I’m a research microbiologist with Just
Thrive Health. And today I’m going to be talking to you about the gut skin
connection and really focusing on the role of the microbiome itself and
the products of the microbiome producers. So these are compounds
that are being produced in your gut by microbes and how those can
modulate pathways that impact the skin. And in fact, we’ll show direct
evidence of changes in the gut that create conditions on the skin.
This is probably the most exciting area in dermatology because we used
to always look at the skin as its own individual organ and focus a lot of
the outcomes of the skin on the outside in. Treating the skin from the
surface. But as it turns out, the most influential parts of the skin come
from within and even so from within the gut and the gut microbiome
itself. So understanding the connection between the gut and the skin is a
really powerful tool in understanding how we can have happier, healthy
skin in many respects.
So we’ll dive in and I’ll be going through all kinds of details. You’ll find
some really technical information that I’m going to be mentioning. But
if that doesn’t make sense, if it doesn’t resonate with you because you
don’t have a science background, don’t worry about it because towards
the end, I’ll be simplifying a lot of it to some very specific rules that
govern the gut and the skin. And ways in which you can modulate the
gut to affect the skin in a very positive light.
So walk with me through all the complicated stuff and the science and
the deep technical language and I’ll explain as much of it as we go along
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as I can, but I promise you that by the end, it’ll make sense. And it’ll all
start to be clear the kinds of things that you can do through your gut to
really profoundly impact your skin. So let’s go ahead and jump right in
here.
First thing to notice that’s really important is that there are different
types of microbes on different parts of your skin. And that will dictate
what the outcome of that skin looks like. For example, in the sebaceous
area of the skin, areas like your face, your chest, and your back you
mainly have microbes like Cutibacterium, Staphylococcus, and even
some types of yeast. In the drier parts of your skin, so areas like your
arms and your legs also tend to be dominated by Cutibacterium and
Staphylococcus, but then you start to see other microbes showing up
like Gammaproteobacteria and Betaproteobacteria.
So you start to see changes in the ecosystem of the skin. And in the high
moist areas, areas like your web between your toes and other moist
areas of your body like your armpits and so on, you start to see much
more corneum bacteria and in the phalangeal webs in your extremities,
you start to see more Staphylococci and so on. So the point here is that
the microbiome on the skin is dictated in part by the type of skin and
where it is on your body. The type of exposure that it gets, the level of
moisture, the number of sweat glands underneath it. So what does the
circulation in that part of the skin look like?
All of these things can dictate the types of microbes on your skin and
the types of microbes will dictate what that part of your skin looks like.
So when we start talking about the gut skin access, there’s some things
that are really important to understand and that is the direct connection
between the gut and the skin. It can be a little bit abstract for people
to understand because you’ve got your digestive track, which seems
separated from your skin, but I promise you there’s a very intimate
connection. There are a number of influences on your skin.
We’ve got intrinsic forces and extrinsic forces. Extrinsic factors are
going to be things that influence your skin from the outside. Things
like sunlight, like hygiene, your beauty routine, exposure to chemicals,
physical activity, the climate, and so on. And then there are the intrinsic
forces. These are the things on the inside or as part of your biology
that impacts your skin. Things like your age, your genetics, your gender,
your immunity status, hormones, sleep, metabolism, and so on. But
among these intrinsic and extrinsic factors, the microbiome can actually
influence both.
And there’s a number of ways that it can do that. So when you start
looking at what the skin microbiome looks like, you start to understand
that the skin microbiome may play a role in the influence of both
intrinsic and extrinsic factors. So first, when you look at most of the
bacteria on the human skin are classified into one of these four phyla.
And remember these are some of the big words that if they don’t
resonate with you, don’t worry because again, I promise you we’ll bring it
all together at the end.
So we have Actinobacteria which makes up about 52% of all of
the microbes on your skin, Firmicutes 24%, Proteobacteria 16%,
Bacteroidetes about 6%. That’s going to be different than what’s going
on in your gut. Your gut microbes have a different distribution of
the types of bacteria than your skin do, but you find lots of the same
types of bacteria in your gut as you do find in your skin. You find those
bacteria in other parts of the body as well. So these microbes spread
around and can be found in multiple areas.
Commensal bacteria dominate the resident species of skin. They
enhance the innate immune system. So right underneath your skin is
your circulation and all of these, the sebaceous glands and the mucosal
layer. And all of these layers have very specific immune responses
based on what is happening on the surface of your skin and we’ll talk
about that a little bit more when we go along. And then keratinocytes
stimulating things like antimicrobial peptide expression, these things are
all influenced by the commensal bacteria within your skin.
And a couple other facts of Cutibacterium acnes, you may have heard
of this. If you’ve been looking at acne and microbes and the relationship
between microbes and acne. Both can directly and indirectly be involved
in the pathogenesis of common inflammatory skin diseases like acne
vulgaris. So we know that there are specific microbes associated with
specific inflammatory conditions on the skin. And even the free fatty acid
production of proinflammatory virulence factors.
These are things that are produced by the bacteria on the skin, or just
below the surface of the skin, or even in the gut. These can all play a
role in how the skin looks and the outcomes that you have on the skin.
So there are many factors here. There are the microbes that live on the
skin, there are the microbes that live in the gut, there’s the immune
system that’s right below the skin. And of course, as we mentioned
they’re both intrinsic and extrinsic factors, of which there are multiple,
that all can influence the skin.
Keeping all of that in mind, there are still some extremely profound rules
on what features of the microbiome dramatically affect the outcomes of
the skin and also dramatically affect your ability to deal with these kinds
of extrinsic factors and even these kinds of intrinsic factors. These are
all stressors and influencers on the skin. It doesn’t mean that any one of
them has an impact on changing your skin dramatically, it depends on
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how resilient your skin and your immune system is.
And how resilient your skin and immune system is, is dependent on the
types of microbes that exist on your skin and below the skin and in the
gut. So the big message here is, there’s lots of factors that can influence
the skin, but depending on your microbes, those factors will either
come into play or not. We all know people who can have many changes
in climate, differences in physical activity, more and less exposure to
sunlight and not have dramatic responses on the skin.
We know people who don’t need to have a beauty routine, they never
wash their face and yet they’ll never get acne versus people who have to
very carefully have a nighttime, daytime beauty routine in order to even
reduce the appearance of acne. So those factors are different for each
person. How it affects their skin changes from person to person. And
as it turns out, the big influencing factor on how all of these stimuli can
affect your skin really is based on the types of microbes that exist not
only in the skin, but in your gut as well.
Here is an illustration of how the gut and the skin can be connected.
So this here at the top is showing your gut lining or we call it the gut
epithelium. This is where the microbiota is. The microbiota are all the
microbes that live in your gut. So this is the lumen of the gut, the tube
of the intestine if you will. These are your gut lining cells and below this
area is where your circulation is. So you’ll find circulation below the gut
lining cells or the gut epithelium cells. So now anything that goes past
here and enters into this region becomes part of the inside of your body.
Once it’s inside the body, it can have a direct influence on your skin. So
this is showing that the things that occur within your gut can make its
way down and have a direct influence of the skin. And in fact, there are
some things that occur on the skin that can in turn affect the gut as well.
So let’s go through a couple of these things.
[10:00]
Number one, things like neurotransmitters, metabolites, and hormones
that are produced by microbes in the gut microbiome will pass through
the intestinal epithelium into circulation and make their way into skin
where they can directly influence what the skin looks like.
So neurotransmitters are transmitters that affect the central nervous
system and the peripheral nervous system that microbes in your gut can
make. Metabolites are things like short-chain fatty acids, which we’ll talk
about later on in the presentation. Hormones, things like prohormones
like vitamin D or even hormones like estrogen, testosterone, all of these
things will influence your skin. Tregs refers to a type of immune cell, a
type of T cell within the immune system that is called a T regulatory cell.
And in fact, this particular cell becomes so important for overall skin
health because it modulates immune response within the body. Again,
I’ll talk about that a little bit more in the upcoming slides, but just
remember Tregs are influenced by and are generated by help from
the microbiome. So the microbiome makes all these kinds of classes of
compounds, those compounds in the gut make their way past the gut
lining into circulation and from there they can make their way to the skin
and influence the skin.
In addition, the central nervous system, which can be stimulated directly
by the gut microbiome and the microbes there, is a two-way street. And
the stimuli from the skin itself can influence the gut microbiome. For
example, feeling of cold or hotness can change what happens to your
microbiome in your gut. If you are, for a prolonged amount of time
in extreme heat and your skin and your peripheral nervous system is
picking that up, that can send signals that can actually start to change
your gut microbiome.
And of course, your gut microbiome being dysfunctional or very healthy
can trigger neurological phenomenon that’ll end up impacting your skin.
And then of course, the production of vitamin D in the skin has a direct
influence on your gut microbiome. Studies have showed that low levels
of vitamin D production actually impact the diversity of your microbiome
which can then in turn impact your skin. Because diversity in the
microbiome will screw up the intestinal barrier and drive more leaky gut.
So under healthy conditions, the gut microbiota produces metabolites,
neurotransmitters, and hormones that can enter the circulation and
end up altering the skin. The same thing of course, happens under a
diseased gut or dysfunctional gut where you now have leakiness in the
gut. When you’ve got these areas between the cells that are opened up,
you get toxins and you get pathogenic organisms that leak right through.
They make their way into circulation and in particular they make their
way to the liver.
When they get to the liver, the liver is undergoing toxicity because it has
to deal with this big influx of toxins and pathogens and so on. When the
liver undergoes that toxicity, it produces more proinflammatory immune
markers. These proinflammatory immune markers can actually make
their way to the skin and drive inflammatory responses in the skin. From
a nutritional standpoint, what we tend to see is the Mediterranean diet,
which means a good diversity diet with good positive fats, a lot of plant-
based materials, very high antioxidant type of diet.
The Mediterranean diet tends to have this kind of beneficial effect on
the skin, but when you look at a Western diet, which is a high-fat, which
is poor fats, you have a high caloric, high sugar type of diet, it creates
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this kind of dysbiosis which drives inflammatory marker production,
which then drives inflammation on the skin itself. So dysbiosis is a
term used for an imbalance of bacteria within your gut microbiome.
This leads to the production of toxins that can escape from the gut
along with bacteria through a leaky gut barrier and end up negatively
influencing your skin.
And in general, this is explains some of the same thing. You’ve got
between the gut and the skin it’s a two-way street. You’ve got an
immunological pathway, a metabolite pathway, a neuroendocrine or
neurological pathway that goes from the gut to the skin itself. And then
you’ve also got an immunological metabolite and external element
pathway that comes from the skin to the gut. And it can be a continuous
loop of influencing one another either in a positive or negative way.
Key features within the gut are diversity. When you have high diversity
in the gut microbiome, you end up making more of these regulatory T
cells, which are really important. Because these regulatory T cells tells
the immune system not to attack or create inflammatory responses to
things that it doesn’t have to. Things like allergens or food particles or
environmental particles, all of these things that can trigger inflammatory
responses on your skin, in your gut, in other parts of the body, the
Treg cells job is to dampen and reduce those types of inflammatory
responses.
And the expression of Tregs is largely dependent on the gut microbiome
and diversity within the gut microbiome. So in order for your skin to be
resilient to those extrinsic factors that we talked about, like being able
to go out in the sun for a little bit, or being able to go out for a walk in
the woods and brush up against leaves and trees and dirt or being able
to brush up against other people. Or anything else that your skin may
come in contact with, personal care products and so on, to have that
resilience and have your immune system be able to go, I don’t need
to react to this thing. I’m going to dampen any sort of inflammatory
response.
You need a healthy, diverse gut microbiome to make that happen.
And another way that that does that besides upregulating regulatory
T cells is a production of something called short-chain fatty acids. We’ll
talk a little bit more about that. All of this builds what we call immune
tolerance. If you don’t have immune tolerance, starting from the gut,
then your skin becomes hypersensitive.
That means lots of things can trigger inflammatory responses on your
skin. Where you get rashes, you get outbreaks, you get hives, you get
bumps and you get all kinds of responses on the skin that are, number
one, bothersome just from a cosmetic standpoint, but number two,
an indication of severe inflammatory response is going on. Your skin
microbes, they actually control your local and systemic immune system.
They generate things like these cytokines and these immunological
responses.
Whether they can upregulate the inflammatory response or down-
regulate inflammatory response. All of this again, is dictated by the
types of microbes in your gut and the diversity of your microbiome. And
this is what this particular schematic illustrates here. Is that when you
have dysbiosis in the gut, you can generate all kinds of inflammatory
cytokines and immune cells right below the gut lining. All of that will
get translated to hyper-responsiveness and hyper-expression of
inflammatory cytokines in the skin and drive skin inflammation and
disease.
So we know that all of these kinds of conditions like psoriasis, acne,
atopic dermatitis, rosacea, so on, are driven by inflammatory processes
that start in the gut itself. And a leaky gut and intestinal permeability is
a big driver of that. That’s what this table shows here. It shows all of the
relationships between these very common inflammatory skin conditions
and the changes that are observed in the gut microbiome.
Of course, you don’t need to know each one of these, but the key thing
here is there’s loads and loads of studies showing that these conditions
are driven by these types of changes within the microbiome. Take
psoriatic arthritis for example, low levels of Akkermansia. I’m going to
talk about Akkermansia later again. Low levels of Ruminococcus. That’s
another important, healthy, preventative, protective bacteria within your
gut microbiome. If you have low levels of these microbes, you have a
much higher risk of developing psoriatic arthritis.
Same thing with acne vulgaris. There’s a number of microbes that are
related to having lower risks for acne and number of microbes that are
related to having higher risk of acne. So that is the key here. Is that there
are changes in the gut microbiome that can be easily observed and
shown to be directly influential or at the least correlative with significant
skin inflammation and conditions. One of the biggest dysfunctions and
most common dysfunctions within the gut microbiome that especially
drives all kinds of pathologies in the body, but certainly with skin
pathologies is leaky gut.
Leaky gut. All of you have heard of that. We’ll talk a little bit about how
leaky gut happens. And then of course, one of the consequences of
leaky gut is the leaking in or something called LPS or lipopolysaccharide.
This is a toxin and it’s an endotoxin that’s made within the system and I’ll
talk a little bit more about that as well. Leaky gut has this really profound
global effect on the body from an inflammatory standpoint, but it
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certainly does that on the skin as well. We know that leaky gut is capable
of triggering something called chronic low-grade inflammation.
[20:00]
And it creates the state throughout the body that can be measured in
all parts of the body distal from the gut, including of course, the skin
and a lot of that is driven by the leaking in of something called LPS.
Again, I’ll mention what that is because LPS is a really potent toxin
that triggers acute inflammation wherever it ends up in the body. And
intestinal permeability has a number of factors that influence it. Things
like diet and stress, but the good news is you can really impact intestinal
permeability in a significant way with the right type of approach and the
right type of products.
Let’s talk a little bit about what happens with leaky gut. So this is a
schematic of your gut lining. There’s three important layers to think
about here. So layer one, this is called mucin one. This is a mucus layer,
which is in the tube of your intestines and this is where most of the
microbes in your microbiome live. There’s this other area here called
mucin two and this is a thicker gel like area that acts as a physical
barrier, protecting your gut lining which is this, these are your intestinal
lining cells, protecting them from all kinds of things up here, migrating
down and going past the gut lining.
So this is layer number three, your intestinal lining. So in a healthy
microbiome where you have high diversity and high levels of protective
strains, these are called keystone species. You’ve got a healthy layer
number one, a very healthy, strong barrier layer number two, you’ve
got really good tolerant immune responses in both of these layers here,
in this top layer and this middle layer as well. And then you’ve got well-
formed tight junctions. These are the spaces in between these cells.
These cells, when these spaces open up, become really leaky.
So this area between the cells are called tight junctions and the
formation of the tight junctions are dependent on the types of microbes
that live up here. So in a healthy, diverse gut, without a whole bunch of
pathogens, with a high level of protective keystone species, you’ve got
this healthy homeostatic environment. When things become unhealthy,
you’ve got a significant issue here because now what tends to happen
is you’ll start getting certain microbes, dysfunctional microbes that start
eating away at this mucin layer number two.
And when it eats away at this thicker solid layer, you start getting a huge
influx of bacteria, food particles, toxins, everything that’s entering into
your system. Again, it starts influxing and making its way down towards
your intestinal epithelium. When it gets to your intestinal epithelium,
your immune system freaks out because your body thinks you’ve got
a big invasion of toxins and bacteria and viruses coming in that can
be really egregious for the host. And so your immune system starts
recruiting all kinds of inflammatory immune cells to this region.
That causes a massive immune reaction in this region, which eventually
harms and breaks down these intestinal immune cells and of course, the
tight junctions in between them open up. And when that happens, all of
these toxins end up leaking through, and it enters into this area, which
is your circulation. And then from here, it goes to the liver and it goes
to other parts of the body as well. So this is what’s happening in a leaky
gut. This can be a six-inch section of your intestines, or it can be a 10-
foot section of your intestines.
It depends on how long you’ve had leaky gut, how bad it is, your lifestyle
choices and so on or if you’re doing anything about it at all. So when
all of this starts to happen, you will start getting this compound LPS,
lipopolysaccharide that’s made in your gut microbiome. It’s here again,
in your healthy microbiome as well. It’s a normal part of what your
microbiome makes, but when it remains up here, it’s not an issue. If it’s
allowed to leak through and make its way here into circulation, that’s
when it becomes a huge issue.
That’s what you really have to pay attention to, this LPS allowing to
be leaking through and entering into circulation, starts the process of
chronic low-grade systemic inflammation, which becomes a foundation
for most disorders including many of the skin disorders that people are
dealing with all the time. So that’s the short schematic on leaky gut.
It all starts with something called dysbiosis, having an imbalance of
microbes within your gut microbiome, having too many opportunistic
microbes, not having high enough diversity, not having high enough
protective species. And then your egregious species will start eating
away at this inner layer here and it breaks down the barrier.
LPS I mentioned, I won’t go through this immunological reaction in
detail, but I can explain. That when LPS enters into your circulation, it
triggers an immune response in your body in all types of tissues in your
body, including every organ, your brain, your heart, your skin, every part
of your body. It triggers an inflammatory response similar to sepsis.
Sepsis is bacterial blood poisoning. It’s a very serious condition.
That inflammatory response releases all kinds of inflammatory cytokines
in your system and these inflammatory cytokines at elevated levels are
all associated with significant risk for long-term chronic conditions. So
that’s what LPS does within the system. Once it gets in, it’s very pervasive
and ends up in all parts of the body and it triggers inflammatory
responses in all parts of the body. There’s all kinds of LPS and what they
show is that LPS, and this is just a study that shows that LPS does trigger
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all of these inflammatory cytokines in the skin itself.
So LPS from the gut has been shown to be able to make it through
circulation, enter into layers near the skin and trigger inflammatory
responses in the skin. Short-chain fatty acids. I do want to mention this.
I had mentioned this earlier that this is something I was going to talk
about. This is a post-biotic that is made by the healthy gut microbes. So
you’ve got these important keystone species within your gut microbiome
that make these short-chain fatty acids for you. They are butyrate,
propionate, acetate and so on. These short-chain fatty acids have a lot of
different function within your system.
One of the key aspects of their function is helping with inflammatory
damage in all parts of the body including the skin. And the studies are
clear that when you have higher levels of short-chain fatty acids, it is
protective against a number of egregious conditions that can happen
on the skin. And in fact, having high levels of short-chain fatty acids is
part of what gives you that resilience against all of these extrinsic and
extrinsic factors as well.
Here’s just an example of that. How short chain fatty acids produce
on the skin by certain microbes can actually inhibit the formation and
the biofilm formation by other microbes. So Cutibacterium acnes, for
example, can make short-chain fatty acids that inhibit epidermidis which
is another healthy skin bacteria. And this kind of inhibition and fighting
with each other can actually change what the microbiome of the skin
looks like and change the outcomes.
And then there are healthy production of short-chain, fatty acids like
the production of sodium butyrate, which can actually help reduce
hypersensitivity in mirroring models where they looked at cutaneous
inflammation. Remember Tregs are the important part of the immune
system that down-regulates unfavorable immune responses. So what
they showed was elevating sodium butyrate, which induces Tregs in the
skin.
So that’s one of the things that these short-chain fatty acids do, will
actually reduce the inflammatory response of specific hypersensitive
cutaneous stimuli. So as you’re trying to induce inflammation in the skin,
it actually reduces that inflammation in skin by upregulating the system
called the FOXP3 positive Treg system.
So the short-chain fatty acids that are made in the gut can upregulate
the presence of this really important type of T cell in the skin, which can
reduce inflammatory responses in the skin itself, giving the skin more
resilience, giving the skin more protection. That way all of these extrinsic
factors and all that don’t create hypersensitivity and inflammation. When
you look at things like eczema, chronic conditions like that, this is a great
study that looked at the impact of diversity of the microbiome and the
production of short-chain fatty acids in kids with eczema.
So they examined the intestinal microbiota signatures of 11 healthy
infants and 28 infants with various eczema severity. What they found
was the severity of eczema correlated inversely. What that means is,
the more severe eczema was, the less diverse the gut microbiota is.
So they’re inverse meaning they’re opposite to one another and the
abundance of butyrate producing bacteria. So when you had high levels
of butyrate producing bacteria and high diversity in the microbiota, you
had protection against the severity of atopic dermatitis and eczema.
So this is really important to note because this shows a direct impact
on signatures within your microbiome to outcomes on the skin. When
you look at other skin disorders within the gut microbiome, it becomes
really clear. So when you look at psoriasis for example, which can be for
people very debilitating condition on the skin, what the studies show is
the impact on the surface of the skin itself, the toxin producing type of
bacteria, the dysbiosis within the skin is directly implicated in the types
of immune responses, these pro-inflammatory immune responses that
stimulate the inflammatory outcomes in psoriasis.
[30:10]
So when you look at the types of microbes present under normal skin
compared to the types of microbes present under psoriatic skin, you see
a very significant difference in the presence of the microbes. And then
the microbes that are dysbiotic, or the ones that are present in psoriatic
skin will trigger much more inflammatory responses, even against the
same normal stimuli that the healthy skin would experience. So it’s not
necessarily the stimuli, it’s the types of microbes on the skin that dictate
what the response that stimuli is going to get on the skin.
And a lot of this is driven through the production of antimicrobial
peptides during skin inflammation and hyperproliferation of
keratinocytes. And so more of these keratinocytes can produce more
antimicrobial peptides. And again, all of that is driven by the types of
microbes actually in the skin. And as we know the types of microbes on
the skin are influenced by the types of microbes starting off in the gut.
When you look at the same thing in psoriasis.
So we talked about how the types of microbes on the skin will influence
the impact of the extrinsic factors from the outside on that skin. In a
healthy, normal skin, you’re going to have no inflammatory response
from these extrinsic factors. In a psoriatic skin, very simple things like
dryness and exposure to certain types of air pollutants and all that can
trigger inflammatory responses on the skin and that’s dictated by the
types of bacteria on the skin. But as I mentioned, the types of bacteria in
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the gut dictate the types of bacteria on the skin.
And so it really comes back to the gut. So when you look at a psoriatic
patient and you look at their microbiome, each of these colors is
represented by a different group of bacteria. You see how different they
are from a healthy individual’s microbiome, someone without psoriasis.
So they have a lot more of this green box here which is the Firmicutes
bacteria. They have tiny amount of this really important Bacteroidetes
bacteria versus in a healthy individual, you’ve got almost 50% or more of
Bacteroidetes and a little bit less of Firmicutes.
They also have tiny sliver amount of this Proteobacteria versus
unhealthy individual has a lot more Proteobacteria and they tend to
have a lot of this Actinobacteria versus in the healthy individual, they
have tiny amounts of the Actinobacteria, tiny relative amounts of
Actinobacteria. So it’s clear that the gut microbiome, which in a psoriatic
patient has a significant alteration compared to a healthy individual. And
that alteration dictates what the skin of that individual looks like.
And that will in turn dictate what the outcomes of that individual skin
is, being exposed to the same exact things that the healthy individual
is exposed to. That’s a resilience factor. And so this really starts to
illustrate why certain people due to all the same stimuli that others may
experience, will start getting all kinds of egregious reactions on their skin
that their siblings or their family members or their loved ones won’t get
because of changes to their microbiome. And, this is looking at these
large phylum levels of bacteria.
When you look deeper at the species level or the genus level really here,
what you start to see is even more differences. You just look at the color
distribution of the different genuses in the psoriatic patient versus the
healthy patient. You see what a significant difference there is in their
microbiome that dictates their skin-based outcomes. And you see these
key factors. And I’ve mentioned this several times before because I want
you guys to remember this. This is really key. When you look at psoriatic
arthritis, these individuals display low diversity in the gut microbiome.
They showed decreased levels of beneficial microbes. I call them
keystone species. They are well known as keystone species, especially
Akkermansia and Ruminococcus as I mentioned as well. These are
really important protective microbes. And then when you look at IBD
comparisons, what you tend to see is people with psoriatic arthritis also
tend to have the same type of gut microbiota profile as people with
inflammatory bowel disease. And in fact, there’s a higher incidence rate
of people with skin disorders having significant gut disorders as well
because it all starts in the gut and is driven by the gut.
And this is just showing you that nutrition plays a role. The intake of
nutrition also plays a role because nutrition impacts the microbiome. So
if someone is on a high saturated fat, red meat, simple sugar diet, high
degrees of alcohol, it has all of these inflammatory immune response
effects. Those effects actually impact the microbiome. And then that of
course creates all these inflammatory responses throughout the body
including gut dysbiosis and a lowering of that Treg, that regulatory T cell
that can increase risk for all of these types of conditions.
These types of good healthy nutrients can actually prevent a lot of
these inflammatory responses. So things like omega fatty acids, n-3
polyunsaturated fatty acids, omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, vitamin B12,
dietary fiber, short-chain fatty acids, genistein, selenium, probiotics. The
right type of probiotics and so on can also undo this effect, which then
will reduce the outcomes associated with these types of conditions.
And the same thing in acne. We talk about psoriasis and a difference in
people’s microbiomes, you see the same thing in acne as well.
So when you look at people with a healthy face, you look at the
distribution of these microbes on a healthy face, on an acne face, it’s
very different compared to a healthy face. Someone with a healthy
back compared to an acne back, you see very different distribution of
microbes. The microbes will dictate what the outcomes of the skin look
like.
And of course, with acne they have done the same thing where they
have identified people with acne tend to have an increased level of
Proteobacteria, a decreased level of Actinobacteria and Bifidobacteria,
lower levels of Butyricicoccus, Lactobacilli, Coprobacillus and so on. So
there are microbiome signatures of acne individuals versus non-acne
individuals as well. And remember that LPS I talked about, where when
your gut is leaky, that LPS is allowed to leak in and LPS makes its way
throughout the body, every part of your body, your brain, your skin, your
joints, everything.
That LPS, when it comes to acne actually triggers the types of
inflammatory response on the undersurface of the skin that leads to
the lesion formation. So this is a study here that shows that we found
that P. acnes, this is Propionibacterium acnes now has been renamed
Cutibacterium acnes in these type 1A and 1B isolates and LPS from the
gut will induce this defense and proinflammatory expression. So the
results provide an evidence that sebo sites… So these are the sebaceous
gland area that make the sebum underneath your skin, are capable of
producing proinflammatory cytokines and chemokine.
These are inflammatory mediators and antimicrobial peptides which
may have a role in acne pathogenesis. And that’s all triggered by the
presence of LPS. So same here, they show that LPS from E. coli was
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present at much higher levels in people with acne. So the leakiness
in the gut seems to be driving the increased risk of developing acne
associated lesions. And so they concluded that circulating endotoxin
because that’s what LPS is. Remember, it’s an endotoxin derive from gut
microbes is not an uncommon feature of acne vulgaris.
And one indicating that intestinal permeability is a potential issue for
a sizeable group of acne patients. So we cannot ignore the role of the
gut microbiome in all of these inflammatory conditions within the skin.
We’ve also been doing some research in this area to figure out what can
you do about it? And that’s what I’m going to share with you in the next
few slides.
So looking at other related conditions to acne, we also know that acne
subjects compared to non-acne subjects tend to have a much higher
incidence rate of these conditions, depression, IBS, and constipation as
well. Those same conditions are also driven by LPS. So it’s not unusual
that LPS, this endotoxin that is the result of leaky gut, is present at
higher levels in acne subjects. The same LPS drives all of these common
conditions as well. So there’s no surprise that acne subjects tend to have
a higher incidence rate of these conditions. It’s all connected through the
gut and dysfunctions within the gut. Same thing with atopic dermatitis,
inflammation from the gut will drive inflammation in the skin.
[40:00]
Now, let’s get to the characteristics and what you can do about it.
So characteristics of a microbiome associated with unhealthy skin.
First of all, it’s a gut microbiome dysbiosis. That’s an imbalance of
microbes within the gut microbiota, which is characterized by low
diversity and low levels of keystone protective species like Akkermansia,
Faecalibacterium, Ruminococcus, Bifidobacteria and so on.
Of course, the presence of intestinal permeability and LPS. LPS of
course, triggers all of these inflammatory cytokines throughout the
body, including the skin, low production of short-chain fatty acids we
talked about that. And loss of competitive exclusion, where you have
an overabundance of certain pathogens on the skin like Staph aureus,
for example. These are the main characteristics of a dysfunctional
microbiome that drives dysfunction in the skin itself.
So what can you do to intervene in those characteristics? First of all, if
we want to combat some of these potentially pathogenic organisms that
are found in the skin and other parts of the body that drive this type of
dysfunction, not only on our skin, but in our gut, in our sinus cavities and
so on, there are probiotic bacteria like Bacillus subtilis that have been
shown to be able to compete against these kinds of pathogens in many
different sites in the body.
That’s what these studies are showing. That the Bacillus subtilis probiotic
can induce pathogen elimination by a signaling interferences against this
pathogen’s ability to metabolize and create energy. So it competes with
this pathogen so that the pathogen can actually multiply and function
normally. So Bacillus subtilis as a probiotic can be extremely beneficial
to start creating this competition within the system. The huge NIH
study actually found the same thing that Bacillus probiotic eliminates
Staphylococcus pathogenic bacteria.
They show that probiotics frequently are recommended and this is
a quote by Doctor Anthony Fauci, as you know, he’s the Director of
the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. He says that
probiotics frequently recommended as dietary supplements to improve
digestive health. This is one of the first studies that the NIH did to
describe precisely how they may work to provide health benefits. The
possibility that oral Bacillus, these are spore-forming probiotics, might
be an effective alternative to antibiotic treatments or some conditions is
scientifically intriguing, definitely work for the exploration.
So it really opened up this whole world of trying to understand how
Bacillus spore-based probiotics can be beneficial in modulating
problems that pathogens are driving in the body, and this includes
the skin as well. So that’s the first thing you can do. The next thing is
we need to look at endotoxins and leaky gut. We published a study on
this in 2017 in the World Journal of Gastrointestinal Pathophysiology,
showing that a specific formulation of spore-based probiotics with
high antioxidant producing probiotic bacteria can actually dramatically
reduce leakiness in the gut and most importantly, the migration of LPS.
So this was the data that we had shown where we’ve shown that in the
spore treatment group, we had a 45% reduction in leakiness in the gut
and LPS migration in a 30-day period. In the placebo group that did not
get a treatment, they actually saw a 32% increase in leakiness in the gut.
And over that 30-day period, that’s a 60% difference between the two
groups. That’s a very significant change in these groups and in the level
of leaky gut in these groups.
So using the spore-based probiotics with the high antioxidant producing
strain, Bacillus indicus, can dramatically improve the leakiness in the
gut and the migration of LPS. And when LPS migrates less, you see a
significant reduction in all of these inflammatory markers. Whereas in
the placebo group, the inflammatory markers actually got worse. These
are all the same inflammatory markers that have been shown in studies
to impact skin and impact other parts of the body as well. And this is all
because we’re shutting down that leakiness in the gut and the migration
of LPS.
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What about changing the rest of the microbiome? Remember the
characteristics of a healthy microbiome as it relates to a healthy skin.
It’s high diversity in the microbiome, high levels of Akkermansia and
Faecalibacterium prausnitzii and Bifidobacteria and so on. All of these
protective strains. And then of course, high levels of production of short-
chain fatty acids. So we published another study in 2019, showing that
when you combine a precision prebiotic and a spore-based probiotic,
you can get some profound changes in the gut microbiome that are
associated with a healthy gut microbiome.
So for example, Faecalibacterium, we saw more than a thousand fold
increase in the level of Faecalibacterium in the same subject after
administering the prebiotic and probiotic combination. Same thing with
Akkermansia. We saw about a hundredfold increase in Akkermansia.
We saw a significant ten to twentyfold increase in Lactobacilli
and a significant 60 to 70% increase in Bifidobacteria even when
Bifidobacterium levels were relatively good in the subjects. So we know
we can increase these really protective, important strains by taking the
right kind of prebiotic and probiotic.
And we see that with the combined cohort data, we saw the
same changes, higher levels of these protective species within the
microbiome, but we also saw the production of those short-chain fatty
acids increase by 80 to 140%. The production of those short-chain fatty
acids that modulate the immune response on the skin and supports a
healthier immune response on the skin and even in the gut itself.
And very excitedly, when we look at diversity in the microbiome, which
is measured through something called the Simpson Diversity Index, we
see like a 30% increase in diversity in a three-week period within the
microbiome, just by taking the probiotic and the prebiotic itself. So we
know we can stop the leakiness in the gut, we know we can increase the
characteristics of a healthy microbiome as it’s related to healthy skin.
And we know that ultimately, we can change what the immunological
responses is like on the skin and protect and support healthier immune
response in the skin through these changes.
But the big question is, can we actually make a direct impact on the skin
by using the same technology to modulate the gut microbiome? And
sure enough, we have this study to prove and we have a subsequent
study that’s just now completed as well that shows the same thing.
This is a study looking at blemish lesions on people who tend to have
blemishes and acne. Both total lesions, inflammatory lesions and non-
inflammatory lesions on the skin. So this is the baseline data for these
patients. This is where they were with the total lesion count in baseline.
After 30 days of taking the placebo, the placebo group did not have any
change in the total number of lesions. But when you look at the people
taking the spore-based probiotics with a high antioxidant producing
strain, there is a huge measurable decrease in the total lesion count.
Same thing here with inflammatory lesions, no change with the placebo,
but a significant change here with the probiotic group. And then of
course, non-inflammatory lesions, same thing, no change here and yet a
significant change here with the probiotic group.
So we’re showing not only are we able to stop the leakiness in the gut,
reduce that LPS, modulate the microbiome in a healthy way, support a
healthier immune response throughout the body including the skin. We
are now also directly showing that there is a measurable impact on the
skin and the outcomes of the skin when you do those modulations. In
this study, where we saw the significant 35, 40% reduction in total lesion
count in just 30 days without doing any other interventions. All we did
was give these individuals just the probiotic alone, just the spore-based
probiotic. Not even the prebiotic.
If we added the prebiotic, we believe that the response would have
been even greater. And we’ve done now a 90-day version of this
particular study with four times as many patients. And we’re seeing a
very significant effect in that even greater than the effect we’re seeing
here. So we know we can impact the skin through modulating the gut
microbiome. So in conclusion, spore-based probiotics administration,
and this is again, a key spore-based formula. And on any spore-based
formula the key aspect of it is the use of this high antioxidant strain
called Bacillus indicus.
So you have to remember the terminology HU36. That’s the strain ID
of this high antioxidant producing strain. This is a really important
strain for the total spore-based formulation. Administration of that
with the precision prebiotic can modulate gut dysbiosis by increasing
diversity, increasing the protective keystone strains like Akkermansia,
Faecalibacterium, Ruminococcus and so on.
[50:00]
We also know that the right spore-based probiotic again, with this HU36,
it alone can change intestinal permeability, reduce the LPS in circulation,
which then modulates and supports a healthier inflammatory response.
We also know that the special spore-based probiotic with the HU36,
when you combine it with a precision prebiotic can dramatically increase
the production of short-chain fatty acids in the gut that has all kinds of
protective effects on the skin, on the gut lining and all parts of the body
as well.
And finally, the Bacillus spores have been shown to provide competitive
exclusion against these egregious type of microbes like staph aureus.
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Even the big NIH study showed the same thing and all of these
changes, not only are great for the gut, great for overall health, but
has a significant impact on skin itself. The last study I showed you was
that the correct spore-based probiotic with the HU36 just by itself can
dramatically reduce lesion counts on skin in just a four-week period.
It’s not theoretical that if you impact the gut microbiome, you’ll impact
the skin. We’re showing that we can impact the gut microbiome. That of
course, has all kinds of health benefits, but it also provides direct impact
on the skin itself. So hopefully that made a lot of sense and you guys
can impact your gut microbiome and really make a change for your skin
outcomes, the right type of spore-based probiotic, the right precision
prebiotic, a healthier, more diverse diet, diet with healthier fats in it,
higher amounts of omega fatty acids, increased plant-based nutrients,
less of the egregious fatty acids, like the saturated fats, less sugar, less
caloric intake within these processed foods.
All of these things make an impact on your gut microbiome which will
then of course impact your skin as well. So thank you so much for this
opportunity to present this topic to you. It’s a very exciting topic to be
able to talk about. Hopefully you guys can all go out there and start
making changes to your gut microbiome, and then you’ll start to see all
of the positive impact that you get out of your skin as well. Thank you.
DIGESTIVE ENZYMES FOR
ULTIMATE SKIN HEALTH
Guest: Amy Rawls, MS, RD, LD, FMNS, CGN
Amy Rawls: Hello, and thank you for joining me today to learn more
about Transformation Enzyme Corporation, and why you should
consider digestive enzymes to achieve healthy skin. Over the next hour,
I’m going to share a key part of addressing skin issues. I’m not here to
talk to you about a cream or a lotion, because those won’t get to the
root of the issue. Today we are going to be diving into something even
deeper than nutrition and that is enzyme therapy.
Before I get started, let me tell you a little bit about myself. My name
is Amy Rawls, and I am a licensed and registered dietitian. In addition
to being a Board Certified registered dietician, I am also a certified
integrative functional medicine nutrition therapist and a certified
gastrointestinal nutritionist, as well as a therapeutic lifestyle healthcare
practitioner. I obtained my master’s degree with dietetic residency
through Lamar University, and have more than 10 years of experience
applying functional nutrition practices to an array of metabolic clinical
states.
I am currently Director of Clinical Services from Transformation Enzyme

Corporation, who are the pioneers in enzyme therapy. With over 30
years of clinical application, our enzymes and protocols have withstood
the test of time with our unique formulations and commitment to
quality. At Transformation Enzyme, I am responsible for all of our
education and development materials, as well as our programs.
I also oversee Transformation’s clinic and technical support services, and
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assist with research and development. I’ve spoken at various events,
seminars, and conferences, both locally and internationally, on topics
related to nutrition and enzyme therapy. And I am thrilled and honored
to have you all listening in with me today. So let’s get started.
We all feel pride when our skin is clear, when it’s smooth and radiant.
We cringe when it’s dry, crusted, sallow, wrinkled, and lifeless. Products
that offer skin renewal are more like magnets for most of us. Oddly
enough, enzymes are mostly ignored in this ongoing quest. However,
they play a vital role in skincare and maintenance.
You may have heard the saying, you are what you eat. Well, I’m here to
tell you that statement is incorrect. You are not what you eat, you are
actually what you digest and assimilate. That my friends is why we will
be discussing the digestive system today, as well as enzyme therapy, and
why a healthy skin starts with enzyme therapy and proper digestion.
You see, real rejuvenation of skin must come from within. It’s not just
a topical process. If you’re listening today, then you probably resonate
with one of the images shown on this slide. These are all conditions
seen in Transformation Enzymes’ research clinic, and they’re probably
conditions that you guys are all dealing with at home right now, which is
why you are tuning in.
Yes, a digestive enzyme company should expect to see a lot of skin

issues because many inflammatory skin conditions have been directly
linked to disruptions in gut microbes, including acne, rosacea, eczema,
and psoriasis. For example, the gut helps to eliminate toxins, so if your
digestive system is compromised, you can’t eliminate those toxins
effectively. Also, a poorly functioning gut can reabsorb these toxins
which can show up in your skin, leading to blemishes, pimples, acne, and
other common skin conditions you see on the slide.
This is just one example of how poor gut health can impact the skin.
Today you will hear me say this over and over. The reason many people
are getting nowhere when it comes to their severe skin conditions is
because the doctors they are seeing are not addressing nutrition or gut
health. Their approach is external and they load you up with antifungals,
steroids, creams, and antibiotics, all things that are just a Band-Aid
approach to driving inflamed skin.
Today I’m going to share with you a true secret in the journey to healing
your skin and that is enzyme therapy. Enzymes are directly related to
the health and appearance of our skin. It is ironic that almost everyone
can understand the value of vitamins and minerals for good health but
when the subject of enzymes comes up, it’s unfamiliar territory.
You may be wondering, “Well, what are enzymes?” Enzymes are proteins
taken from food and made by the body. They must be present for any
chemical reaction to take place in your body. Even vitamins, minerals,
and hormones cannot do their job without enzymes. Too small to be
seen through the most powerful microscope, they are the catalyst, the
dynamic power that gives us our ability to function at the highest level
of good health. We simply cannot exist without them. And for proper
digestion to take place, enzymes must be present. We will cover some of
these enzymes in the next slide.
Enzyme therapy plays a vital role in nutrient acquisition and delivery of

nutrients to the cell. So all the nutrients you focus on for healthy skin
depend on these magnificent substances for proper breakdown and
delivery at a cellular level. Again, we will discuss that in a moment and
show what happens when we lack enzymes and how that shows up in
the body.
But for now, I want you to focus on this, throughout your journey to
healthy, happy skin, you will hear a lot about how diet and nutrition
are the first step and that theory is correct. You do have to start there.
However, the next step is ensuring that all the wonderful nutrition you’re
providing the body is able to be utilized. Vitamins, minerals, hormones,
etc., remember, they cannot work without enzymes.
So think of it like this, enzymes are the labor force that build your body,
just like construction workers are the labor force that build your house.
You may have all the necessary building materials and lumber, but
to build the house you need workers. Similarly, you may have all the
nutrients, all the vitamins, minerals, proteins, etc. for the body, but you
still need the enzymes to keep the body alive and well. The enzymes are
what break the nutrients down to bioavailable parts that the body can
utilize.
Therefore, enzymes help digestion and nutrient bioavailability. They

support nutrient delivery to the cell, which support cellular structure
and function, as well as cellular communication of all the 11 systems of
the body, including the skin system. As mentioned on the previous slide,
we need a blend of enzymes for complete digestion of food. Some are
made by the body and others are not. And while our body does make
some digestive enzymes, we will talk about why supplementation is still
necessary as over time, the body’s production declines.
Here’s a list of common enzymes used for complete digestion of

carbohydrates from the body. These are referred to as polysaccharide
lytic enzymes, and they assist in the complete and proper breakdown
of starch, sugar, fiber, etc. For complete and proper breakdown of fat
the body makes and benefits from supplementation of lipase. And for
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breakdown of proteins, as well as systemic support, the body benefits
from supplementation of proteases.
So here are a list of common proteolytic enzymes used to support the

body in proper breakdown of proteins. But these enzymes are also
unique in that they are used away from food to support the body with
detox, immune function, blood flow, and inflammation. So when you
hear us at Transformation talk about a proteolytic formula, we are
talking about a formula that strictly contains proteases.
So let’s break it down. Our skin is the largest organ of the body and
includes the hair, nails, sweat glands, and oil glands. Our digestive
health and nutrition are reflected in our skin. Intestinal permeability,
aka leaky gut, causes both systemic and local inflammation, which in
turn contributes to skin disease, aka leaky skin. The skin plays a major
role in protecting us and eliminating waste. Studies have shown that
both stress and gut inflammation can impair the integrity and protective
function of the epidermal barrier. Therefore, it is important to provide
skin cells with all the building blocks and nutrients necessary to keep
them healthy.
Feeding from within, we must feed the skin from within, not just
externally. To do this, we must provide this game with proper nutrients
from the diet. The skin needs fats, proteins, and carbohydrates to
remain healthy and vibrant. Fats, proteins, and carbohydrates are
what provide you with the micronutrients or the vitamins and minerals
needed for healthy skin. That is why digestive enzymes play such a vital
role in healthy skin upkeep.
Enzymes determine which nutrients will be available for skin

nourishment, and which won’t. If your digestive system has enzyme
deficiency, nutrients that are encouraged for healthy skin, like vitamin
C, vitamin A, vitamin K, your B vitamins, these nutrients stay locked
inside the foods you eat and exit the body undigested. Other important
minerals like zinc, sulfur, selenium, copper, essential fatty acids, will also
not be utilized and can actually lead to more toxicity in the body; further
exacerbating skin issues because they’re not being digested.
In a nutshell, poor digestion means the skin becomes undernourished,

weak, and susceptible to problems. Now let’s see what poor digestion
looks like from a different lens. The image you see here is what we refer
to as the ripple effect of digestion and disease. The outermost circle
represents the presented illness of one of the 11 systems of the body,
and the inner circle represents where the disease began, or where the
problems began that led to that disease.
So as you can see, we have our skeletal system, our skin system, our
urinary system, our nervous system, muscular, lymphatic, endocrine,
digestive, cardiovascular, reproductive, etc. The foods we eat and the
things we surround ourselves with are the first step in combating
disease. But you can’t stop there, you have to make sure you’re digesting
your foods appropriately. Or even the healthiest foods can make any of
the 11 systems of the body toxic.
So whether you’re tuning in today because of eczema, which would be

a weakness in your skin system, candida overgrowth, which would be a
weakness in your digestive system, or perhaps ADD, which would be a
weakness in your nervous system, it all ties back to diet and digestion,
nutrition and nutrient acquisition. If we are not digesting that leads to
toxicity, from there, toxicity produces inflammation. And when we have
inflammation it leads to imbalance, which leads to, you got it, disease.
So I showed you how poor digestion leads to toxicity and the

ripple effect, but I wanted to break it down further. Poorly digested
carbohydrates ferment in the colon. This provides food for harmful
microorganisms to consume this, which results in increased gases
which can overwhelm our system and contribute to more toxicity and
inflammation.
[10:00]
Poorly digested fats will turn rancid in the large intestine. Toxins in the
colon are absorbed into the bloodstream where they are oxidized and
can become free radicals, the opposite of what we are aiming for when
we consume healthy fats.
Poorly digested proteins putrefy in the colon. Microorganisms consume

this, which results in—you got it!—toxicity. Because it is protein, the
kidneys become overloaded as well as the lymphatic system, which also
works to remove toxins. Now, we detox four ways, through our lungs,
our colon, our skin, and our kidneys. See how this can be problematic
for the skin if we have all this toxicity building up from not digesting our
food?
Constipation is less than one bowel movement a day or a bowel

movement that is daily but hard pellet size. If you’re not sure if you or
your child is suffering from constipation, I strongly recommend Googling
the Bristol Stool Chart for a reference. You want to be hitting around
the number four on the Bristol Stool Chart. If you are having regular
bowel movements daily, but they look like a one or a two, that is also an
indicator of constipation.
Now remember, we detox four ways, one of those being the colon
and the other, the skin. If the bowels are not eliminating, then there’s
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only one more outlet, the skin. Poor digestion and insufficient enzyme
production will also lead to constipation, another big culprit of skin flare
ups. The toxicity from constipation will lead to skin breakouts and flare
ups. This happens when the toxins and waste are reabsorbed back into
the bloodstream via the colon, rather than being eliminated.
From the bloodstream, these toxins can exit the body by its largest
detoxification organ, the skin. Giving a digestive enzyme formula
with meals will help ensure proper assimilation and bioavailability
of all nutrients, supporting cellular health, function, and repair.
Complete digestion also minimizes toxicity and supports a healthy
immune system. It’s also recommended to give a probiotic. A probiotic
supplement further supports digestion and the immune system while
maintaining a healthy gut environment.
So just to recap why digestive enzymes are the next step and part of
the solution to healthy glowing skin. Enzymes are catalysts that work
in healthy digestion, freeing the nutrients in our food that will form the
building blocks of glowing skin. Enzymes are the power source behind
efficient circulation that will bring nutrients to our skin. Enzymes are
responsible for reducing the various unsightly signs of detoxification
that come through our skin.
Enzymes also slow the aging process that is evidenced by sagging and
wrinkled skin. Supplementing with digestive enzymes is beneficial for
the absorption of all nutrients necessary for beautiful skin. Digestive
enzymes and probiotics help the body renew damaged cells while also
decreasing constipation, a key for glowing skin.
So you may be wondering, if we make enzymes, why do we need to

supplement? Well, our bodies also make things like vitamin D, and
over 75% of the population is deficient in that nutrient. The reason
we need to supplement is because today we are finding that the need
for better nutrition and enzyme therapy has never been greater. Your
body produces digestive enzymes, however, it cannot produce enough
digestive enzymes to keep up with the typical Western diet, which is full
of enzyme depleted, cooked, and processed foods.
Things like GMOs and pesticides are also wreaking havoc on our
digestive system capabilities. Stress also plays a big role in our natural
digestive enzyme production. And our environments are more toxic
now than ever before. Then there’s also genetic factors that influence
the development of our digestive system. Not only does our inability to
slow down and chew and savor our food affect our ability to properly
digest, but our hectic and toxic lifestyles are also causing us to use up
pancreatic or digestive enzymes faster than we used to. And we have a
limited amount of them.
It is important to note that while our bodies produce enzymes, as we
age that production declines. In fact, after about age 30, you start to
lose enzyme propensity by about 10% every 10 years. So yes, your body
makes its own digestive enzymes but oftentimes, our bodies do not
make enough to break down everything we consume, especially as we
age. And you may be thinking, “Well, my child has skin issues, but they’re
not anywhere near 30. They should have plenty of digestive enzyme
production.”
Let’s take it back to there are things like diet, stress, and environmental
toxins that can all affect our enzyme propensity. Not to mention, a
child’s digestive propensity is determined at nine weeks gestation. So
the health of the mother is very crucial in determining the health of
that child’s digestive tract and their ability to have sufficient enzyme
production when they’re brought into this world.
So where do we start? A great foundational approach to getting to

the root of skin conditions is to provide the body support from three
things. First will be a digestive enzyme with meals to help ensure proper
digestion and nutrient acquisition to supply the body with the nutrients
needed for healthy skin. Next, a probiotic to further support digestion
and the immune system, while maintaining a healthy gut environment,
which is essential for healthy skin.
And finally a proteolytic enzyme between meals to promote optimal

blood flow, support efficient detoxification, and help manage
inflammation. So when we eat our food that ensures that we are
digesting our food, we are assimilating the nutrients, providing the body
with what it needs for repair, and having overall wellness. Versus not
digesting our food, having toxicity, loads of inflammation that will result
in illness and imbalance.
So now that we’ve covered how enzymes are related to skin health, why
we need them and where to start, I hope you’re connecting the dots that
the healthier the diet and digestive system are, the healthier the entire
body and the skin system will be. Now, let’s take a moment to look at
some real life testimonial and case studies of those whose lives have
been transformed with enzyme therapy.
The first testimony I would like to share is one of a 36 year old fitness
model and athlete. Due to the stress that her lifestyle of excess training
and restricted dieting had on her body, it was no surprise that she
suffered from skin issues. After two months of enzyme therapy, using
a digestive enzyme with meals, a proteolytic between meals, and a
probiotic at bedtime, she found herself with clear skin, a clear mind, and
a clear colon.
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Remember what I said about how constipation is linked to the skin. Both
of her detox pathways were blocked up due to the toxic load her body
was taking in on a daily basis. The enzyme therapy reduced that toxic
load, thus reducing her inflammation and allowing the systems to get
back into balance. She was getting the proper nutrient support since the
digestive system was now making sure her food was being broken down
properly, allowing the skin healing nutrients to be released. And her
biome was also being fed with good bugs to help with the pH and skin
balance. And the proteolytic was reducing that inflammation and toxic
load.
This next case is one that is near and dear to my heart. A turning point
for him was the introduction of a digestive and proteolytic enzyme,
and a probiotic that helped to regulate his pH and microbiome. Here is
another great example of how digestion plays a critical role in the health
of the skin. This child was also constipated, which we addressed and
resolved within a week of starting digestive enzyme therapy. However,
his skin took a bit longer to improve.
I want to note that for some, digestive enzymes will be enough and
you won’t need other support supplements. But this is not the case
for all children, this child required more than the average bear but the
enzymes were a critical piece to his recovery. He is now 10 months
old and free of any eczema on his skin. He also has one to two bowel
movements a day. After working very hard on his digestion, we were
able to start titrating his supplements down. And now he is on a
maintenance protocol of a digestive enzyme with meals, a proteolytic
enzyme between meals, and a probiotic at bedtime.
Here’s another testimony of a patient seen in our research clinic with

psoriasis. Like many of you listening today, this poor mom had tried it
all, the creams, the oils, the steroids, the antibiotics, other gut healing
products, nothing seemed to work. She came to our clinic and was
started on a digestive enzyme with meals, a proteolytic enzyme between
meals, and a probiotic at bedtime. Like the others, the protocol was
simple, and that simplified protocol was critical to this child’s success. As
you can see the enzymes worked wonders on her skin as they were
addressing the root cause of her imbalanced digestion.
So now that we have covered the importance of enzymes for healthy

skin, shown evidence of how they can work, I wanted to spend a little
bit of time going over what to look for when selecting a quality enzyme
supplement. There are lots of options out there, some good, some not
so good. So when it comes to enzyme therapy, working with a clinician
who is trained or at least familiar in enzyme therapy is so important as
they can properly guide you to a quality formulation that will give you
the results you seek.
As an enzyme company, Transformation is always getting questions

about the type of enzymes used in our formulation. If you don’t already
know, supplemental enzymes can be either plant, mycelial, or animal
origin. Some people refer to mycelial as fungal, it means the same thing.
So what’s the difference between animal, mycelial, fungal, and plant?
Animal enzymes or glandular enzymes such as pancreatin require an

alkaline pH which limits their activity in the digestive process. They
require an enteric coating and can only begin working in the small
intestine, not in the stomach. Their best work is in an alkaline setting of
the blood but not necessarily for digestive purposes. They are also not
recommended for pregnant women or children.
Plant and mycelial or fungal based enzymes have the ability to work
throughout the entire digestive process and do not require enteric
coating. Therefore, these enzymes are more useful to the body’s
digestion than any other type of enzyme supplement. They are also
100% safe for babies, children, and pregnant and nursing women. When
you start in the stomach, you deliver a much more digestible product to
the intestine, which will also help with food allergies, leaky gut, and skin
issues.
Selecting a quality enzyme. Now, a quality enzyme will be GI stable. For

example, Transformation Enzyme conducted a GI stability study to show
and prove all the different pH’s where the enzymes were active. Now,
I’m not going to be getting into this in depth today. I just wanted to show
you that when you work with the proper blend of mycelial and plant
forms, they will work both in an acidic and alkaline pH level, meaning the
entire digestive process.
We also get a lot of questions about enzyme safety because as

previously mentioned, enzymes are not a well understood entity. I
speak to practitioners all over the world on a daily basis about enzymes.
And some of the brightest minds out there are very misinformed and
unfamiliar with them. It’s important to remember that enzymes are
natural to the body. They are not different than what is in a person’s
body. We are just adding more to assist.
[20:00]
Enzymes are just proteins and they do not build up in your

body either. So when talking about safety and toxicity with their
supplementation, here’s some perspective. Medications are something
foreign to the body, the body has to work hard to detoxify and process
them. Even herbs and lots of vitamins are more foreign to the body
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than enzymes and require detoxification through the body. Digestive
enzymes do not require detoxification from the body. They simply have
an allotted amount of activity and once they are done, they are recycled
or eliminated.
A good digestive enzyme will be derived from fungi, but are an isolated
pure protein. They are filtered out, extracted, and tested to make sure
it’s only the pure enzyme with activity. If they test and show anything
other than an enzyme they would know because the enzyme will not be
functioning. Other ingredients will also be very minimal and a quality
enzyme product. For example, at Transformation Enzyme, we work very
hard to keep excipients out of our products.
When looking at other ingredients you want the list to be minimal,

typically nothing more than cellulose and water or gelatin and water.
Sometimes you may see calcium citrate, which is used as a buffer for
improved tolerance, not as an added ingredient. There are a number of
enzyme supplement products on the market today. Looking at labels of
products, you will find measurement units you may not be familiar with.
These units are from the Food Chemical Codex or the FCC. The FCC is
published by the National Academies Press and is the accepted standard
of the US Food and Drug Administration. The system for determining
enzyme potency used by the American food industry is derived from the
FCC. This is the only national standard for evaluation of enzymes. This
system establishes activity levels and potency for enzymes.
Most food comparisons are based on weight. However, with enzymes

the key measurement is in the unit of activity and potency, not weight.
There is no direct relationship between weight and units of activity. So
be aware of a product that lists enzymes only in milligrams, this does
not tell you the actual activity level of the enzymes.
I also want to note that digestive enzymes can be paired with other
digestive support agents like herbs, HCL, and ox bile. It is important to
use caution here when looking for enzyme support as the herbs will take
up a good bit of room in your capsule, decreasing your enzyme activity.
They are also not going to break down the food either like an enzyme
will.
And in regard to HCL and ox bile, HCL is not a digestive enzyme and
side effects are greater risk when given in achlorhydria. Achlorhydria is
when there is no stomach acid production, which is extremely rare. And
typically, the low stomach acid production is not really the issue, it’s the
poor digestion and lack of enzyme production.
Ox bile is another one to use with caution as it is derived from animal,

which means one, it requires enteric coating and two, the health of the
animal is not always up to par with what someone looking for a clean
supplement wants. If you select an enzyme with proper quality and
quality ratios of lipase, protease, and carbohydrates, you will find that
these other ingredients are not always necessary as the enzymes do a
pretty good job on their own.
So let’s take a minute to walk through some good and bad examples of
an enzyme supplement. Here is an example of a very popular and costly
prescription enzyme supplement. As you can see, there is no FCC unit
used here to describe the enzyme activity, it simply just says amylase,
lipase, and protease. All you are told is that it contains these enzymes
and we have no idea about the activity of each one in there, giving us the
actual potency that we’re getting.
Then let’s look at the inactive ingredients or excipients, as I like to call

them; croscarmellose, sodium, hydrogenated castor oil, colloidal silicone
dioxide, microcrystalline cellulose, magnesium stearate, hypromellose
phthalate, talc, triethyl citrate. Not to mention, to make the enteric tablet
they use some well-known food dyes linked to allergens like FD and C, as
well as blue number 2.
Here’s another great example. Now this is much better than what we
saw on the previous slide. However, it does have a pretty lengthy list
of excipients. The more excipients you have, the less enzyme activity
you get. This product also has some additional support ingredients for
digestion, one being ox bile, which is why the lengthy list of excipients
due to the inherent coding required.
These excipients are often added due to pressure by manufacturing

to speed up production times and allowing the said company to sell a
cheaper product. They provide no nutritional benefit and can actually
increase toxicity in some individuals. And as mentioned, when working
with an animal source like ox bile, it will require enteric coating which is
why the longer list of ingredients as well.
Here are two examples of a comprehensive digestive formula that

will provide you with a balanced blend of polysaccharide lytic,
proteolytic, and lipolytic support. Remember, polysaccharide lytic is for
carbohydrates, proteolytic is for proteins, and lipolytic is for fat. These
two formulas are using the appropriate measurements for enzymes and
also contain no excipients. I would like to note the calcium citrate you
see in the first formula is there as a buffer for improved tolerance of the
powerful blend. But see here’s the list of the FCC units. Now, some will
say milligrams but you can see the proper FCC unit right here. So that is
what you want to look for, not just straight milligrams.
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Here’s an example of two different systemic formulas. Remember, these
are our proteolytic formulas that we refer to. Systemic formula means
a proteolytic. And the product on the left is a blend of different mycelial
and plant enzymes which require no enteric coating. Now, this one does
list the amount of proteases in milligrams. However, again, if you look
below, the FCC units are there, telling you the activity right here.
Whereas, the product on the right is an animal enzyme. And if you

look at the other ingredients, the list is much longer. It has cellulose,
vegetable based enteric coating, vegetable stearate, natural vanilla
flavor, purified water. And remember, this one will not work in the
stomach at all, so if it is a low acid issue, this one won’t really help you.
So to wrap up, I wanted to be sure to include Frequently Asked

Questions, since there is no question and answer portion to the
presentation I’m giving today. I’ve mentioned this a few times already. So
I’ll be brief with this frequently asked question, “Why do you use mycelial
or fungal enzymes instead of animal enzymes?” To reiterate, the benefits
of fungal enzyme products are; no animal by products, free of harmful
excipients, greater systemic benefit due to GI stability and functionality,
wider range of pH stability, meaning they work in a broader range within
the GI tract.
Another common misunderstanding about enzymes is their safety.

Due to misinformation and the internet, there are rumors that fungal
enzymes are not safe and can create mycotoxins. I’m here to tell you
this is simply not true. Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus are
responsible for producing mycotoxins called aflatoxins. When it comes
to the selection of safe organisms in the fermentation process, the
specific strain is extensively screened to determine if the organism is
capable of producing mycotoxins under the conditions of fermentation.
Only those organisms that do not produce any toxins are selected for
the use in the fermentation process. Only safe Aspergillus are used
in the fermentation of enzymes. Non toxigenic strains used by TEC
are Aspergillus oryzae and Aspergillus niger. Fermented enzymes are
nothing new. They have been used for over a hundred years, with no
documented cases of illness from mycotoxins.
Again, enzymes are nothing more than isolated proteins. They’re not
living organisms. Mycotoxins are not proteins. For further reassurance,
even after an organism is determined to be safe and is used in the
fermentation to create an enzyme, every second generation is again
checked to verify that mutations have not occurred, which might enable
the organism to produce a mycotoxin. And even still, the final enzyme
product is still checked, just to be sure.
Some of you may be wondering how safe enzymes are for enzymes in
children. The good news is they are 100% safe and actually encouraged.
Digestive enzyme supplementation, along with proteolytic enzyme
supplementation, is encouraged to make sure that your child gets
proper nutrient acquisition and delivery at a cellular level. Digestive
enzymes in your child will help support optimal digestion, a healthy
immune system, and a healthy GI tract overall.
Enzymes for children can come in different forms, meaning they can
come in the form of a chew, a powder, or a capsule. Enzymes cannot be
delivered in a liquid form because when they are added to any type of
liquid they will activate. That is why you will see in Transformation’s line
of children’s formulas, we do not have any liquid options. We do offer a
chew or a powder option for infants and children. We also offer a variety
of digestive and systemic enzymes with different formulas, based on the
needs of your child.
Transformation Enzyme has successfully applied enzyme therapy

protocols with various conditions, such as diarrhea, constipation, colic,
reflux, allergies, eczema, asthma, cystic fibrosis, and autism, just to
name a few, for over 30 years. As for dosing, that depends on the need,
not the age or weight of the child. Dosing does vary, so I encourage you
to work with a clinician trained and familiar with enzyme therapy, when
determining the appropriate dose for your child.
Probiotics and enzymes are similar in that they both support healthy
digestion. However, people often get confused and think that probiotics
are a digestive enzyme and that is not true either. Digestive enzymes
are proteins that catalyze and break down food into nutrients to be
absorbed into the bloodstream. Probiotics are live supplemental
organisms that support the native microbiota. Meaning probiotic strains
are also known for their ability to secrete enzymes and metabolize food
in the intestines, thereby assisting the digestive process, but they are
not digestive enzymes. For someone that needs digestive support, an
enzyme should be used in combination with a probiotic.
So in summary, the gut and the skin enjoy a constant dialogue via what
has become known as the gut skin axis. While symptoms of gut issues
can be incredibly varied, the skin is often a great barometer for what’s
going on inside the gut. Our gut is where we make nutrients, metabolize
hormones, and detoxify. It’s where we neutralize pathogens and make
neurotransmitters. So it’s super important to get your digestive health in
check in order to feel well and of course, experience clear, glowing skin.
Therefore, no matter the skin condition, to truly heal, we must first get
to the core of our immune system.
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[30:00]
And that means we must focus on where the majority of our

immune system is housed, the gut. The digestive system must be
functioning optimally to ensure that the nutrients are able to get to
the cell to support all other systems. Without the digestive system
working properly, all of the other systems, including the skin, will be
compromised.
So that concludes our presentation for today. Thank you for listening. I
hope you now have a better understanding of why enzyme therapy is a
critical part of the puzzle when it comes to skin vitality.
If you would like to learn more about enzyme therapy, feel free to check
us out at transformationenzymes.com or you can email us at clinic@
tecenzymes.com.
Thank you so much.
MOISTURIZING AND SYMPTOM
MANAGEMENT
Ryan: Hello there! And we’re very glad to have you back with us
for Lesson 4 of the Eczema, Psoriasis & Skin Disease Masterclass,
Moisturizing and Symptom Management. So, just to recap, we’ve talked
about how skin disease does have a cause. When our first son was
diagnosed with stage 4 cancer at a year old, and they told us it was just
bad luck. And then we started digging into it and found out kids didn’t
really get cancer 100 years ago and beyond. Something didn’t add up
there, to say the least.
And while we’ll never know the exact cause or combination of

contributors that added up to that cause, we can confidently say, it was
indeed caused by something. Fast forward to today, we know that we
had an extreme situation right after Rocky’s birth. And that Teddy had
to take the most hardcore, broad spectrum, antibiotics to save her life.
Rocky was fine at birth. And then, afterwards, we started seeing mild
symptoms that grew, and grew, into high grade eczema.
We got 2 different microbiome analyses on him that both agreed his

gut was completely wiped out. And when we took him to a conventional
dermatologist, they laughed at the idea that this could have been caused
by anything other than, you guessed it, bad luck.
Teddy: We bring that up to really make sure we’re hammering in that

everything in the Universe, including eczema, and all skin disease has
a cause. There is no uncaused cause. So again, watch all the advanced
presentations with our experts, relating to the potential causes. Work
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with a holistic doctor and so forth, to identify and address whatever the
primary causes were for you.
But that being said, as we found, it’s all well and good to know that there
was a cause, and be working to reverse it. But it’s not an overnight fix.
So, in the meantime, we had to do everything we could, to keep Rocky
from tearing at himself, and making things worse. When we talk about
inflammation as a root cause, and also a contributor to the perpetuation
of the condition not getting better, the absolute worst thing is to be
itching, and scratching at the worst spots. All that’s going to do is create
more inflammation.
Yet, that’s pretty much the only thing you can think about, when you’re
actually going through eczema. That is the exact reason we were up all
night, every night, dealing with Rocky’s case. All throughout the night,
one of us, I mean mostly me, was up all night, making sure he didn’t tear
at himself, and making things exponentially worse than they already
were.
Ryan: Because we knew how bad his skin was all on its own, was
bad enough. But the minute he got his hands on it, was a completely
different story. Whenever he was able to really scratch at it, was our
absolute worst times.
And we’re talking about dealing with trying to get a baby not to scratch
himself. You might have a hard time not scratching your own problem
areas, even knowing instinctively how detrimental it is. So, all that said,
what we’re trying to convey here is that it is most definitely a healing
journey. The fix isn’t going to happen overnight.
Teddy: And this is why, even though we were well aware this condition
had a cause, and we knew full well we were working to address that
cause, along the way we didn’t ignore the things that could bring
immediate relief. In fact, we embraced them as we knew this was going
to give us the best chance to avoid all the itching and scratching that
would result in more inflammation, and a longer time to healing.
So that said, when we talk about moisturizing and symptom

management, we focused on 2 primary strategies – healing and
moisturizing lotions, combined with wet wraps, and yet again, more
healing baths. We’ll take a look first at the lotions and wet wraps, and
circle back to the healing baths after that.
Another great tool in managing flareups are wet wraps. So, we have a
couple of options here for Rocky. Because he is little, we were able to
use this full bodysuit, which literally covered his hands and his feet. It
was kind of hard to get him inside of this thing because when it’s wet, it’s
also a little bit sticky.
Ryan: It’s wet.
Teddy: And he’s a very wiggly little boy at this point. This is by AD
RescueWear. And it’s great as far as like just having something that’s
specifically clothing to put on and to use as a wet wrap for this purpose.
You can also just use cloth if, say, you just have like one area on your
arm.
But basically, the premise of it is just getting the cloth completely wet,
usually in warm water, especially if you’re putting it on a kid, on their
whole body. You don’t want to get them cold. And then putting clothes
over it, to regulate body temperature. And then they can go to sleep.
And while you can certainly just use water, we found that these were
really great to seal in the products that we talked about in our anti-
inflammatory and anti-pathogenic section. They were all great to use
underneath this. And the wet just helped to seal them in, and let the skin
just fully open up and absorb them.
One thing to note though is, over time, if you do it enough times, this
can start to actually thin the skin. So, if you’re seeing that things just
aren’t getting better from just doing the wet wraps, then it’s time to take
a deeper dive and progress throughout the lesson. But if you just have
a mild to mid case chronic skin condition, then the wet wrap is a really
effective tool. Or if you have, say, just one stubborn patch on a particular
area of your body, this can be a really great way to just get those
products in even deeper.
Ryan: Yeah, particularly if you just feel like something’s really dry.
Teddy: Yes.
Ryan: Because there is the infection and inflammation component, but

then there’s also just the straight up like, nothing is actually moisturizing
the skin. The skin is just soaking everything up, like a deck that hasn’t
been stained for 20 years. And just no amount of stain is going to bring
that thing back to life.
So, that’s what we found with a lot of the topical products that we really
liked. They are very moisturizing, but it was just when we went the extra
mile and sealed them in with wet wrap, that’s when we just noticed
more of just the general moisturization we were looking for.
Teddy: Got deeper penetration and actually keeping the products on the
skin.
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Ryan: So yeah, again, this is the full bodysuit that we found for Rocky.
But we also just have this organic gauss that I got from just a textile
company. I think that does it for the wet wraps.
Again, like we’ve talked about, when it comes to particular products,

absolutely in no way are we saying that these are the best and the only
ones to be considered. But, that being said, these are the ones that
made the biggest impact in our journey, dealing with high grade eczema.
And like we’ve talked about, I don’t even know how much of it we can
peg to any one product in particular, as opposed to the overall system.
It’s not just the root causes. It’s not just the environmental toxins and
triggers. It’s not just the bacteria, fungi, and inflammation. It’s all these
things combined. And once you recognize that, addressing all of them,
and managing the symptoms along the way, so you don’t get worse,
before you get better.
Teddy: So, when you’re looking at moisturizing products, yes, you

should see what they claim to do for eczema, but our thing has always
been, is this thing 100% natural? Does it come from natural God-given
sources? Or, does it have a lot of additives and preservatives in it. How
many naturally oriented people can we find that have used it and have
had great results?
Ryan: So, we’ve been talking a lot about specific products, products
we like, what to look for in products, how to find them, how to rotate
through them, etcetera. But what if you want to make your own product.
And we’re talking about moisturizing and symptom management right
now, but this could really go across the board to the anti-bacterial,
anti-inflammatory front. It could go even to nourishing the skin, skin
detoxification.
If you really want to start playing around with all the different things you
could do, maybe you’re not finding the particular product that you like
for just whatever’s working or not working for your skin. So yeah, maybe
you want to make your own.
[10:00]
We are here on location, at Barlow Herbal. You remember the
golden salve product we talked about, back in the antibacterial, anti-
inflammatory section. That was a creation of Jane Barlow. Jane, say hello.
Jane: Hello! I’m happy to be here.
Ryan: Yeah, yes. Jane’s obviously has just been making that product for
a long time. And we love a lot of her stuff. Jane, so, you’re about to teach
everyone how to make their own salve. And before we go any further,
when we were on the phone, talking about this, I was calling it a salve.
And you were saying salve. It’s probably one of those things that I’ve
been saying wrong for years.
Jane: I don’t think there’s a wrong way. I think you can call it salve, but
it’s pronounced, at least to the best of my knowledge, as salve. I think
the “L”…
Ryan: It sounds like salve is the right way.
Jane: The “L” is silent. But hey, you know what, salve is good too.
Ryan: I just found out I was saying cassava wrong, recently. I was saying
cassava for the longest time.
Jane: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, some are hard, like calendula, some people
call it calendula. And it’s pronounced calendula. But it doesn’t matter.
Ryan: Yeah. So anyway, you’re about to teach everyone how to make

their own salve.
Jane: Yeah.
Ryan: But you also make salves that people buy and love.
Jane: Yeah.
Ryan: I just kind of rambled there for a minute about why you might
want to make your own versus buying something, but could you speak
to that anymore. A little more intelligently than I just did?
Jane: Well, I think you spoke pretty intelligently about it. The thing is
this. When you make your own salves, the very cool thing is that you can
customize it to what you need.
Like say, you want something for bruising, or say you want something
for an infection. And maybe you can’t find, like we do lomatium oil in
most of our salves. But maybe you can’t get lomatium. What other
herbs you can fuse like chaparral herb into an oil. And that’s a great
antimicrobial.
So, to me it’s fun. It’s fun to make your own salves. You can get creative.
Then you can give it as gifts. And I think partly too, you save a lot of
money when you make your own salves.
Ryan: Yeah.
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Jane: And that is a really great reason. And that’s why I think whoever’s
wiling to learn from me, I say go for it. And then you have a group of
people who say, well, I really love that. That looks really interesting to do.
How about if I just get the jar all done. And it’s right here. But if you’re
interested in it, the sky is the limit on the herbs you can put in, the uses,
how much fun. You can use essential oils in your salves.
Ryan: Yeah.
Jane: It’s amazing. Really, it’s amazing.
Ryan: Yeah. Like we were talking about before we started recording

here, Teddy and I have been talking about, hey, we should get into
making our own stuff, for several years now. And it just still hasn’t
happened. But I do enjoy geeking out on just finding a whole bunch of
different products and why did you make it like this. And where do you
source your stuff. And blah-blah-blah. So, that’s fun for me.
But yeah, it would certainly save a whole lot of money making our own
stuff. And then I could geek out on my exact formulation that I wanted
to make.
Jane: And you would geek out. There is a learning curve, especially
when you’re doing, salves are a different than like tinctures. Because
tinctures you ingest. So, there is a bit more depth of knowledge
when you’re making tinctures, especially when you’re blending herbs
together. Because you have to know what herbs complement. Like, what
constituents of one herb complement the other. Or, maybe there’s an
adverse reaction, especially if you’re going to do a tincture.
Ryan: Yeah.
Jane: So, there is, and if you geek out on that stuff, you know what I say?
Go for it. Because it is super fun.
Ryan: Good stuff.
Jane: Yeah.
Ryan: And then, we’ve been using the word topical product, lotion, salve,
etcetera, all kind of interchangeably throughout this. But what is the
definition of a salve versus a lotion or some other topical product? Or,
are we kind of talking about the same thing?
Jane: They can be the same. Like, I would say a salve and a balm are
almost the same. So, a salve, it has a more solid consistency. So, you’re
using things like beeswax, to give it some…
Ryan: Thicker?
Jane: Thicker. And it actually can sit on a wound. So, if you have a skin
wound, and you have a salve, you can put it on a wound, and it’s not just
going to run all off it. A lotion, or a serum…
Ryan: Absorb right in there, versus a salve, you can actually kind of coat
it little bit.
Jane: Yeah, you can coat it and then you can cover with a band aid. And
it just has a little bit more solidity to it. So, yeah.
Ryan: Well, I am excited to learn how to make a salve.
Jane: Yeah, it’s good. And so, we’ve gotten started here already. and so,
everyone, there will be a PDF with the whole recipe that I’m going to
show you. This recipe makes 62, 2-ounce jars. And I do not think that
you want to make 62 jars for just you and your family. Unless you have a
big family and you want to share with them.
So, this one, I have already melted down. So, I think you might be able
to see that if I tilt that a little bit. And I already have measured into here,
coconut oil, shea butter, and beeswax. And then, I’ve got this right here
which is another batch of this. But this has not been melted yet. So, you
can kind of see. So, there’s measured out in this, 3 ½ pounds of shea
butter, 3 pounds of coconut oil, and 1 pound of beeswax. And that is the
perfect ratio.
And then I’ve got the measurements so that you can make 20 jars of 2
ounce, instead of 62 jars. Yes. So, I’m going to go, and actually I’m not
going to do anything with that.
Ryan: Do you have a particular place you like to get your bee stuff from?
Your wax, and…
Jane: Yeah. I have a couple of places. There’s a place here in Utah that’s
called Mt Majestic Sage. There’s also a place in Oregon, called Mountain
Rose Herbs. And there’s a place in California called Starwest Botanicals.
Ryan: Yeah.
Jane: And also, a place back east. And that’s called Jedwards
International. And I can give websites. We can attach websites for all of
those, because they have coconut oil. They have beeswax. They have
shea butter. So, it’s a place where you can get all those.
So, what is in this now is, the coconut oil, the shea butter, the beeswax.
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Now here’s one thing about the shea butter. If you’re going to be melting
shea butter down, you need to look for high melt-point shea. Because if
you melt it down and then you pour it in, and then it reconstitutes solid,
about 50% of the time, the shea butter will turn granularly. So, it’s still
good, and it will eventually melt on your skin. But it’s not going to be
creamy. So, in the recipe I give you, it will say high melt-point shea.
Ryan: All right.
Jane: And there is a difference. So, now what I’m going to add is, I’m
going to add some lomatium oil. So, here’s some lomatium oil that
was actually just filtered a couple of days ago. And I always put the
date because eventually oils that are homemade, they don’t have any
preservatives, will go rancid. So, you want to have a certain period
of time. I would suggest, if you make oil, I make mine by the gallon,
because we use so much. But I would suggest making it by the quart.
Ryan: Yeah.
Jane: So, right here, this is just for people to see.
Ryan: And so, making it like this, is kind of another, you could make your
own herb-infused oil, or you could go source an herb-infused oil from
somewhere.
Jane: Yes. And almost all the resources that I gave you, that I gave you
for getting the other things, you can get herb-infused oils. So, they are
totally there. This right here is lomatium oil that’s still curing. And you
can see the lomatium in it. And then this has been filtered. And this is
ready. So, we started this on April 3 , and now it’s ready to filter. And it
rd
will look like this because all this will be filtered. This is the root material.
And I do it by the gallon. But I don’t suggest that. Because you won’t be
able to use it up. So, I’m going to add a cup of lomatium oil to this batch.
And there will be measurements because you’re not going to add a cup
to just 20 jars. You’re only add like a third of a cup.
Ryan: Yes.
Jane: So, I’m just going to take this. I’m going to pour. I’m just going to
measure it up to a cup. And then I’m just going to pour it into the melted
oils. Super, super easy. And whatever you’re using. So, if you don’t have,
say for example, you don’t have access to lomatium oil, like we talked
about chaparral oil. You can make chaparral oil.
Ryan: And these, we’re talking antimicrobial, antipathogenic.

Jane: Antimicrobial, yes. So, if you have an infection, a skin wound,
perfect. Absolutely perfect. I also…
Ryan: And that’s what we were talking about in the last section, is, a
lot of people don’t realize that eczema, the worse your case is anyway,
gets kind of infected, and then perpetuates. And you can all of the gut
healing you want, but if you’ve got infection all over your skin, then…
Jane: Right. And here’s, most people probably know this, especially if
you’re watching something like this. Your skin is your largest organ. And
whatever you put on your skin, ends up inside of your body. That’s why
whatever toxic products that you use, they’re toxic. And they end up
inside of you. It’s just like, anyway, I think that’s very interesting.
So, we got the lomatium oil in there. And the last thing I’m going to add
to this batch, is vitamin E oil. Now again, I buy this by the gallon. But you
can get it in like an 8-ounce jar, a 4-ounce jar, or a bottle. Because you’re
going to use much less than I do. Now, the thing about vitamin E is it
acts as a natural preservative.
Ryan: Okay.
Jane: So, whenever I infuse these oils, I add vitamin E while they’re
curing. And then I add vitamin E after I’ve filtered it. So that every single
stage, it’s still getting vitamin E. Because, not only is vitamin E healing,
but vitamin E will preserve.
Ryan: Yeah, that’s a nice double whammy there. Everyone knows

vitamin E is good for the skin, and it also helps preserve it, without…
[20:00]
And that’s another thing we talk to people about is, watch out, like
even like the purest of organic shampoos that you buy in a bottle, or
something like that, it’s still going to have some sodium benzoate or
something like that in there. And if you’ve got a really sensitive skin
condition then that could be enough to set you off.
Jane: Yeah, yeah. I think people would be surprised at how much better
they would feel if they would start releasing some of these skin care
products that they use.
Ryan: Yeah.
Jane: It’s pretty amazing. So, this is actually how easy this is. So, I’m
going to stir the vitamin E. And I don’t know if you noticed how thick that
was, when it went in. And then, the lomatium oil. And now this is totally
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ready. Now, what I do is, because this is such a big batch, and it’s going
to be 60 jars, I basically keep my burner on low, so that the oils will still
stay liquid until I pour them into the jars.
So, I’ll step over here for one second. So, I went through painful
processes, learning what’s going to pour the best into the jars. We used
to use like a dipper and pour it into the jars. And messy. I tried to, one
time, have my husband weld a thing where we had a spigot on it. Messy,
so messy.
So, what we found are these. Now this is really, really strong. And it will
hold the heat of the oils. And it gives us a little pour spout, so we can
pour it into the jars without spilling. Now, we still might drip a little bit
but that’s okay.
Ryan: Wipe off at the end a little bit, where we’re going.
Jane: Right. So, look at how easy this is. So, I’m going to pour some of
this into here. And I’m not going to fill it up all the way, because if you fill
it up too full…now look, here’s the trick. I don’t want the oils to drip onto
my burner. So, there’s the salve. And then, here are my jars. These are
2-ounce jars. You can use plastic jars. But I love glass jars.
Ryan: We are big fans of glass over plastic.
Jane: Yeah, as am I. So, if you have the option to use glass, I would
definitely use glass jars. So, I’m basically just going to take this, and I’m
going to pour the salve into here. And I just go through and pour it all
until it’s all poured. And I’m going to do one more and then I’m going
to show you how to add essential oils to this. Because this is when you
want to add them. All right.
Ryan: You’ve got it pretty much filled pretty close to the brim there.
Jane: Yeah. And if I look, this one’s a little bit lower. But I’ve overfilled
them in the past. So, this one is a blend of 5 essential oils known as
thieves. So, eucalyptus, lemon, rosemary, clove, and cinnamon. And this
is amazing, especially if you’ve got lomatium in a salve. So, basically what
I do is, I just squeeze up my dropper. You can see how full that is. That’s
a little past a third. This is about 40 drops.
Ryan: Yeah.
Jane: And then, I’m just going to basically take it and put it into my salve,
like that. And that’s it. And it will go through the salve and then when
you use it, it’s all the way through the salve. It’s that easy.
Ryan: No mixing or…
Jane: No. No, no, no. So, these three we’ll do that. And then, if I didn’t
add any essential oil to these, and you can add whatever you want. If
you want to add lavender essential oil, you want to add frankincense
essential oil. So, here’s a good tip. If you wanted to make a salve like
this, use frankincense essential oil. Frankincense has great anticancer
properties.
So, if you’ve got areas of your skin that are suspicious, this would be
a wonderful salve just to even put a little bit on it, just because you’re
getting the frankincense. Or you can use frankincense neat, directly on
your skin. So yeah, that’s it. That is as simple as that. And then basically,
you just let them cool and they’ll solidify.
Ryan: How long does it take to cool?
Jane: I usually let them sit for about an hour. Because if you put the lids
on while they’re still warm, there will be condensation up inside the lid.
And then it’s going to leave moisture inside your salve. And you don’t
want that. So, it’s really that simple.
Ryan: So, we’ve got the shea butter, coconut oil, beeswax mix here.
Jane: Yeah
Ryan: We’ve got the herb infused oils and we’ve got essential oils. Could
you speak to… kind of the 3 categories that we’re talking about here is
again, antibacterial, antipathogenic, and anti-inflammatory. Because if
you’ve got a bad case, it’s probably infected and inflamed.
Jane: Yeah.
Ryan: So, bring it back down. We’ve also got just more general
moisturizing because it’s what we were going through really hard with
Rocky. It was like, no matter what we put on there, it was just kind of,
I think I used the analogy of like a deck that hadn’t been stained for 40
years, and it was soaking everything right up.
Jane: Yeah.
Ryan: And then like, kind of skin detoxification, purification, nurturing,

that sort of thing. So, just with those 3 categories in mind, would you
want to talk a little bit about what to do when or what people might be
looking at, as well as combinations?
Jane: Yeah. So, infection and inflammation, to me that’s actually pretty

simple. The coconut oil has antibacterial. So, you get that in all of it. Cat’s
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claw. So, I’ve got some cat’s claw right here. This is cat’s claw oil. It’s still
infusing. And you see the cat’s claw bark in there. This has powerful
anti-inflammatory properties. I’m going to set that down easy so that it
doesn’t do that.
So, I would definitely put cat’s claw oil in a salve that maybe you needed
antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory. And then I would do essential oils
like lavender, geranium, chamomile. Even the thieves essential oil blend
is nice for microbial things and inflammation.
As far as nourishing your skin, and detoxification, first of all, get rid
of all your crappy stuff. You’re going to immediately start to detoxify.
Like, that right there, if you eat clean, take broken cell wall chlorella,
a good chelator, eat cilantro. Like, give your body real food. And stop
using crappy products on your skin. Stop the antiperspirant with the
aluminum, and the parabens, and all of the stuff.
Like, that’s the best way to detox in my opinion, is to simply stop doing
these things. And then only put good, clean stuff on your skin. Like,
I know people who use simply will get coconut oil. And that’s their
moisturizer.
Ryan: Yeah.
Jane: And so, to detox with salves, I think that’s kind of a hard question,
because the thing you want to do is only put good things on your skin.
And then, stop using the crap. And so, then your body would go, oh,
okay. I know how to be now. Because you’re stopping me from really
being healthy. So, to me, that’s the best thing.
Honestly, geek out and do some research. Like, what herbs? So, here’s
some good herbs like for bruising – arnica and comfrey. Infuse or buy
arnica and comfrey oil, and put them in your salve. And if your kid gets
a bruise or you get a deep bruise, use the salve on the bruise, and it’s
beautiful. And the same recipe. Just add different oils to it. Yeah.
Ryan: And actually, that said, I just talked about moisturizing versus
detoxification, but also when we’re talking about moisturizing, we’re
also talking about symptom management in general. So, like itching.
Anything in particular there for…
Jane: Like any of this stuff.
Ryan: Anything that we just talked about.
Jane: Anything we just talked about. If you put something really

nourishing on your skin, even just the plain, golden salve, without…
so you can make a salve even without an oil. You could pick your own
oil. Like, pick whatever herb oil, like calendula is amazing for skin
that’s itchy, and dry, and maybe needs some nourishment. Calendula
flower oil is beautiful and it’s super easy to make yourself. Because it’s
expensive to buy a calendula flower oil that’s already made. So, that is
super easy.
And this basically, I’m just going to give a really quick tip here. When you
make your own herb-infused oil, you basically get the raw herb. And I
always get organic, always. And then, I put the herb in it, and I fill up my
jar. So, I would start with a quart jar instead of a gallon. And then you fill
it with oil. Now, sometimes I use organic olive oil. And sometimes I use
like organic grapeseed oil, or organic sweet almond oil. It doesn’t really
matter. But a really light oil.
Ryan: A light oil.
Jane: A light oil. And then you put the herb in, and you pour the oil
over till it’s full. You add a daub of like vitamin E. And then, I usually get
a chopstick, and I poke it in. And I let all the air bubbles come up. It’s
because, if the air bubbles stay in there, it will go rancid.
Ryan: Don’t want that.
Jane: So, all the air bubbles. And then you basically put the lid on. And I
set it in a sunny window for 30 days. And boom, it’s done.
Ryan: That’s it.
Jane: That’s it. And you can do this with any herb. It doesn’t have to be…
so this is the cat’s claw. This is great for inflammation. And yeah, you can
do anything with this stuff. It’s so fun.
Ryan: Just put it in the window for 30 days.
Jane: Yeah.
Ryan: All right. But back, a couple of years ago we got like, it was the
magic butter machine or something like that. And I think it was for
making like THC.
Jane: I think I’ve heard of that, yeah.

[30:00]
Ryan: Butter or whatever. But like, you can infuse anything with
anything, with it as well. And that’s what we were using it for. But, I don’t
know, it seems like it was kind of complicated. It never really took. But
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I think if we had known all you need to do is put some herbs and some
olive oil. Put that in the window for 30 days.
Jane: Yeah, yeah. And the thing is, there are some people who infuse
oils and they use heat. They’ll like put it on the stove.
Ryan: It was a heat device. Yeah.
Jane: Right.
Ryan: Is that kind of a short cut?
Jane: It’s a short cut. And it’s fine, if you’re in a hurry. But I would say,
letting Mother Nature do its job is really the best way to do it. And
there’s something so satisfying about the whole process.
Ryan: Love it.
Jane: Yeah. So, any other questions?
Ryan: Not that I can think of. This is awesome.
Jane: Yeah.
Ryan: I honestly did not know it was this easy.
Jane: Yes, super simple. Super simple.
Ryan: Good stuff,
Jane: Yeah.
Ryan: Jane Barlow, thanks for showing us how to make a salve.
Jane: You’re welcome.
Ryan: Salve. I said it again. Salve.

Jane: Perfect. Thanks for letting me show everybody.
Ryan: And of course, this does bleed a bit into the last topic, bacteria,
fungi, and inflammation. Because of course some blends and products
have both moisturizing and antipathogenic components to them. That’s
why this class isn’t exactly a pure, do this, and then do that program.
Because it’s going to be a little different for everyone.
But we are quite sure that these things are the main categories everyone
needs to be focusing on when it comes to eczema and skin disease. So,
if you check all these boxes off in terms of the cause, and the external
pathogen component, and all that, and you still have symptoms, that’s
absolutely fine.
Teddy: And, no one said this journey isn’t going to be a journey. It

probably took years for this condition to develop. And from everything
we understand, if you really go at it this hard, it might be much shorter
to reverse. But that still doesn’t mean it’s going to happen overnight.
And to be honest, to this day, we still freak out when Rocky has a
breakout. All of a sudden it seems like everything we’ve done has been
for nothing. I don’t think that that will ever go away. But again, what
we’ve come to learn, the stressful way, I might add, is that nothing that
happens in terms of a flareup and so forth, necessarily means that
you’re actually going backwards.
Ryan: There have been at least 200 times when I was sure Rocky was
going through a full-blown relapse. And we kept an extra close eye on
him during those times. And it turned out to be just some added stress,
or something Teddy ate, or even teething. But every time, we managed
the symptoms, kept doing what we were doing to heal him overall. And
it always turned out that whatever it was, could be called a setback at
best, and not an overall change in direction for the worse.
So again, we just want to stress that. Just because you’re going to

go through what looks to be like a setback, it absolutely does not
automatically mean what you’re doing overall is not working. It may well
just mean you had something set you off temporarily. And the best thing
you can do is just manage it.
Teddy: So, we already showed you the things that could be either
local or systemic to the whole body in managing symptoms, with the
moisturizing lotions and wet wraps. We’re going to show you 2 more of
each. Hydrocolloid bandages and more healing baths. We’ll start with
hydrocolloid bandages.
So, with hydrocolloid bandages, these are a great tool for spot
treatment. If you have one nasty localized flare that just won’t seem to
go away, these can be a really helpful tool. At one point, Rocky had one
patch on his inner forearm that just seemed like it would never heal. It
was one of the first patches that he got. And it ended up being the last
patch to completely go away.
But before he broke out head to toe on his whole body, and we realized
that it was a much more systemic issue than we had even realized at
that point, we did utilize these hydrocolloid bandages on him. And we
noticed, after putting one on and it falls off by itself after about 5 to
7 days, just depending on how long it takes for the body to heal the
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wound. We just noticed amazing results on that local area.
Unfortunately, in our case, because with Rocky it was so systemic, these

weren’t a tool that we could just completely employ to rid his body of
eczema. Because that whole two-way street thing, we weren’t addressing
the internal cause enough for this to work. Like I said, this is great if you
have one small patch.
We also tried to use it on his whole body at one point, because we had
seen how well it worked on one small area. So, we thought, hey, why
not? Let’s put these on the kid head to toe. And if anything, they’ll help
block him from itching, which they did. But unfortunately, this is not
good if you are covered head to toe in a flareup.
I ended up having to pull it off of his face because he was just so

irritated and uncomfortable. And I ended up giving him a much more
receded hairline, and removed part of his eyebrows. And that was all
over Christmas time and it was very stressful. So, I will not do that in that
case. But for the intended use of just a local area, they’re great.
Ryan: Yeah. And they’re for wound healing. And these aren’t like holistic
health companies making these things. You can find them at different
drug stores, CVS, and Rite Aid, and places like that. But, they’re for
wound healing. And basically, they create like almost a moisture seal
that just seals in that area so it cannot dry out.
And yeah, for whatever reason, that is really effective for wound healing.
But people have also found that it works really well for eczema. And as
you can see, we talked about a spot treatment, but we did find them
in all these different sizes. This one’s pretty big. So, you could have a
pretty big patch that would be covered by this one. Yeah, there is even
some studies done on children with eczema where they, it was an actual
dermatologist measuring the results and all that stuff. And…
Teddy: And I remember in that study, they actually did do it on the face.
But they have made like a custom-size hydrocolloid bandage mask to go
over the face. And the kids in that study ended up having the flareups
on their face go away for a longer period of time than the kids that didn’t
have those bandages.
And also, just to be clear, there are no added medications on these.

These aren’t like medicated band aids. These are just literally just
creating that moisture seal. And then leaving the healing up to your
body’s own mechanisms.
So, in addition to healing, they are also great just in symptom

management. If you just need itch relief quick, and you also need
to provide a barrier so that if you’re just constantly going to town
scratching a particular part of your body. You can put something on it
that’s going to create a barrier and you’re not going to be able to itch
through that, and damage the skin further. And create even more of
an infection that’s going to keep perpetuating the infection, and the
symptoms, and the 2-way street.
Ryan: Yeah. And what most people found is not only does it, like Teddy
mentioned, prevent you from itching, but it actually stops the itch to a
large degree as well. So, I think that does it for hydrocolloid bandages.
So again, hydrocolloid bandages are pretty much the definition of a

spot treatment. If you have a spot, and that all the lotions and what not
we’ve talked about aren’t working, hydrocolloid bandages may just be
what ends up getting the job done. But if it’s more than just a spot here
and there, that’s a different story to be sure. And yes, when Rocky had
spontaneous breakouts over his whole body, we indeed tried covering
his whole body with hydrocolloid bandages.
Teddy: And that was, as you can probably guess, a huge mistake. These
things are meant to be applied to well-defined areas that they can
contain entirely. Not the entire body, if it’s affected, and there is no well-
defined endpoint to the affected area.
The most notable thing we achieved from trying to apply hydrocolloid

bandages to Rocky’s whole body including his whole face, was the top of
his eyebrows disappearing, and a partial mullet appearing, when trying
to cover his entire forehead became too much for him. And we had to
rip the entire bandage off of him, and much more [inaudible] than we
had anticipated. Poor guy. That was so terrible.
Ryan: Good times. These things can work wonders. Just make sure
the area you’re trying to reverse is again, a well-defined spot, with a
beginning, an end you can easily identify. Not the hair and the eyebrows.
[40:00]
If it is indeed more of an overall, whole body flareup you’re trying to get

under control, for the second time, it’s baths that come to the rescue
here. Let’s look at our favorite moisturizing and symptom management
options, when it comes to the healing baths that can be added to your
routine.
Teddy: So, when we’re talking about symptom management, it’s

definitely worth mentioning oatmeal baths. Oatmeal baths can be great
at helping with super, super itchy flareups. Early on with Rocky, they
were incredibly helpful for him, before things just started going downhill
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quickly for a variety of other reasons. Because at that point, we just
hadn’t addressed the root cause.
So, while we were just talking about symptom management, this was
indeed a very helpful tool for us. And it’s important to know some
people may have an oat allergy. So, in that case, I would just take a small
amount of these oats. And what Dr. Sheila recommended is, just rubbing
them on the hand for several days, and seeing if there is any sort of
localized reaction.
Unfortunately, it’s not a perfect science, but at least it is something that

you can do before just jumping into a bath, immersed in this, just in
case there is some sort of reaction. So, the easiest way to do an oatmeal
bath is by taking about a cup of the oats, and then blending them up to
as fine of a powder as possible in either a blender, a food processor, or
a coffee grinder. You want to get it really fine so that it dissolves in the
water.
You’ll be soaking in warm water, not hot water, just warm. Because
again, this is something that’s just meant to be just soothing and
something just to calm itchy, angry skin. So, first take about a
tablespoon of the ground up powder, see if it dissolves in the water. If it
does, great. You can keep on adding more. If it doesn’t, you may have to
ground it up further.
Or, you can take a cheesecloth bag, put the ground up oats into the
cheesecloth bag, tie it off. And then put that into the tub with you, and
soak with that. With that, another dual purpose could be if you have any
exposed flares outside of the bath water, you can just very gently rub
the cheesecloth bag on those areas. And it can be really soothing.
It was really a lifesaver with Rocky. Thankfully he doesn’t need to do

that anymore because his skin is beautiful. But early on, we were very
grateful that this was a tool that we had for him. And this one, I picked
out too because this one has oatmeal, but it also has lavender essential
oil. And then just a variety of different mineral salts, which is also just a
very calming and relaxing bath. Especially when your whole system is
just completely in flareup mode, and you just need everything to calm
back down.
Ryan: Yeah, speaking of calming, should also mention that this product
has lavender already in it. But you can get creative with your baths as
well. I know the Zielinskis are going to be talking about this. They’re the
essential oil king and queen. But you can add your favorite calming,
soothing essential oils like lavender to an oatmeal bath like this.
And then, speaking of salts, another go-to for us back in the cancer days
was the Epsom salt, baking soda, and sea salt bath. And you can find
information on just taking an Epsom salt bath. You can find information
on just taking a sea salt bath. But we actually refer to it as more of
a detox bath. That’s how we kind of knew of it in the cancer world,
because it does such a good job of drawing toxicants out of the body.
But Epsom salt, and the baking soda, and the sea salt together, it also
just very calming, very soothing to the skin. So, you can find a lot out
there on this particular bath, being really calming. And yeah, calming for
eczema symptoms.
So again, that’s one of those things where there’s no real consensus on

here’s the exact measurements between the Epsom salt, the sea salt,
and the baking soda. But I find a lot of one-to-one, one part Epsom salt,
one part sea salt, and a half part baking soda, is kind of a good ratio that
I find. Again, it’s not an exact science but just getting those three things
together into the tub, on your skin, is a really good thing.
One thing I will note on Epsom salt in particular is, there are some
companies that source it from China. Minimal information on toxicity
and that sort of thing. And it can be a carrier of toxicity. So, getting it
from some sort of company that talks about their sourcing, their testing,
all that stuff, is a really good idea.
I should also mention, with Epsom salt, the main calming thing about it
is, you’re essentially absorbing a whole ton of very absorbable form of
magnesium into your body. Kind of we all know magnesium is just very
calming overall, get you out of that fight or flight mode, back down into
a rest and digest mode. And then overall, just it’s calming to your mental
state, but it’s also calming to your skin.
Teddy: So, there you go. You’ve now got 2 spot treatment options and
2 whole body options. Again yes, the moisturizing products you saw we
indeed like and use a lot. But there are a whole lot of good ones out
there. It’s more about getting a good rotation of quality products going,
and combining them with the wet wraps when you feel like you just can’t
get the dryness under control.
And when it comes to flareups, that just won’t go away no matter how
much you moisturize at a spot level, that’s where the hydrocolloid
bandages come in. You’re just giving the body a little extra space to do
what it was made to do – heal.
Ryan: And, if it is more of a systemic flareup that you’re dealing with,

that’s where you’ve got to pivot to this next group of healing baths we’ve
introduced, either the oatmeal bath or the Epsom salt -sea salt - baking
soda combo, like we talked about. Go big on these things.
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We’ve had the motto of, going all the way in everything we do, be it
cancer or eczema. And it’s really paid off. So, just because you’re dealing
with a flareup of some kind, be it a really bad rash, or an itch, or both,
doesn’t mean you need to just tough it out and deal with it.
Teddy: And also, we’ve been talking all about things you can do to calm
the skin, but just not having things irritated all the time, and having
something to protect it, when you get the urge to scratch, particularly
in kids, can make all the difference in the world. So, before we go, we
definitely need to talk about all the special clothing we found, specifically
for this purpose.
We touched on some of these clothes in our environmental triggers

section, where we talk about different kinds of clothing that we get for
Rocky which is just the best to have against your skin if you are going
through a chronic skin condition. But there’s definitely some crossover
here on a couple of our favorites, for when we’re talking about symptom
management.
Which, in this case, clothing is a really effective way to just manage

symptoms when you are going through a chronic skin condition,
especially if you’re experiencing just that overall itching and irritation,
and anything against your skin feels itchy. But then on the opposite side
of that, any time air touches the skin, you just want to tear your skin off.
And that was basically Rocky, was, any time we had him in for a diaper
change, and his skin was exposed to any air, he literally just wanted to
attack himself. It was really awful and miserable for him, and we’re so
glad that he is not suffering like that. And happy to say that he doesn’t
really wear any of these symptom management clothing anymore for
that purpose.
We still keep him in the pajamas and the onesies, just because they are
just extra comfortable. And we feel like he’s been through enough and
he deserves extra comfortable clothes.
But, like we said, we touched on this before, especially for kids who are
going through some sort of itchy skin condition like eczema, this is really
great because there’s no seams that are touching the body. The tag is on
the outside. At night time, if there is scratching, we have these wonderful
mitts here that cover the fingernails. You can still do a lot of damage
with friction, but not with just fingernails, where you’re literally tearing
the skin open.
And this company, Remedy Wear, makes adult sizes as well, which is
awesome. So, you can wear these as undergarments or pajamas, and
not have clothing that irritates you, when you’re sleeping or going about
your life. And for adults, you don’t need your jammies to have the hand
covers, because you’re not going to be pulling a glove off of your hand.
[50:00]
But I do know that this company makes adult-size gloves. So that if

you’re itching without even knowing that you’re itching, in the middle
of the night, you’re not doing that damage to yourself and perpetuating
just that chronic inflammation. And not giving your skin a chance to heal.
So, Remedy Wear, if you can’t tell, we are really big fans of this clothing.
This is also something that we had gotten from them as well. This, it’s
very tiny but it’s meant for an infant. So, you could use your imagination
for bigger sizes, for adults as well. But this can go on either the elbow,
because that’s a very common place to have flareups. Or, in Rocky’s
case, he had actually his biggest one was on his forearms.
So, this was really great in just protecting that because it was a
very open wound that we did have to protect, just from the outside
environment so that he didn’t pick up some sort of infection. These are
crazy for me to look at because these ruled our life for months, and
months, and months. And we have probably like 3 or 4 pairs of these.
These are called Scratch Sleeves. And basically, they are exactly what the
name implies. These are sleeves that you can put on, over the clothes.
And really these are mostly for kids, because kids are just going to take
off any gloves that are on their hands, let’s face it. And then, do the
damage to themselves without even knowing really what they’re doing
to themselves.
So, we had Rocky sleeping in these at nighttime. If this was unavailable,

or if it was dirty, and every time he was in the car. And if we forgot to put
on the sleeves, then he would then really in seconds, would just start
with scratching and just be bleeding. So those were really stressful times
that I’m really grateful that we are out of now, and can be talking to you
about right now.
So, if you’re there, know that it’s very temporary, and you’re definitely
on your way to relief. But while you are finding that relief, it is really
important to protect yourself from yourself, or your kid from him
or herself, so that there’s just not more damage and scarring that’s
happening during the healing process.
And we know healing itself, especially in those first couple of days can be
itchy. So, the eczema itself is very itchy, but then, as these wounds start
to close up, that in itself is itchy. So, it’s just really important to manage
the symptoms while you are going through that healing journey.
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Ryan: So, there are plenty of things you can do between all we’ve just
shown you here, to ensure you’re not tempted whatsoever to scratch,
and you can keep your progress nice and steady on the road to total
healing. All right.
Well, we’ve said it with each of these lessons, but especially when it
comes to symptom management, whether you’re going through eczema
or any other skin disease, taking a look at what Dr. Z and Mama Z have
to say in this area is a must. They’ve got a recipe for just about any
possible ailment you could imagine.
Teddy: And beyond that, reminder to be addressing that root cause,

whether it’s a gut imbalance, or hormone imbalance, or toxicity, or
stress, or some combination of all of these, along with treating any
infection you’ve got going on topically, while implementing all the
moisturizing and symptom management strategies we’ve just gone over
here. And we’ll see you again on the next lesson on light therapies and
skin detoxification.
MOISTURIZING AND SYMPTOM
MANAGEMENT
Dr. Zielinski: Hello and welcome to lesson four: Moisturizing and

Symptom Management. In this lesson, you’re going to learn about the
importance of proper skin moisturization, some of our favorite tips to
manage nagging skin symptoms, and we’ll wrap up with a wonderful
DIY segment with Mama Z to show you how to make our soothing,
healing emollient, as well as hot and cold compresses that can give you
immediate relief. Ready to get started? Me too.
So when it comes to skin moisturization, it’s really important to
remember proper hydration. Again, your skin is your largest organ
on your body. And most people don’t recognize that actually being
dehydrated inside can manifest being dehydrated outside.
And that’s why it’s really important to drink the right kinds of water.
Because we know that water that is riddled with fluoride and chlorine
not only damages the skin and can be linked and has been linked to
skin disorders like eczema, psoriasis, and others, but it could cause an
inflammatory response in the body.
And as you’ve learned in previous lessons, that’s something that we
need to stay away from. That’s a definite no-no. So the thing is you
need to drink proper amounts of water. Now, notice I didn’t say proper
amounts of liquid because I’ll never forget-- don’t tell Mama Z’s dad I’m
saying this, I’m tattling on him, but Mama Z’s dad is not one to drink a lot
of water. His version of water is a diet soda.
So when he’s trying to get the amount of “liquids” in, according to his
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doctor, he’s drinking diet pop instead of water. And so that’s not the
habit you want to get into. Yes, of course, flavored water.
And by the way, in my book, The Healing Power of Essential Oils and The
Essential Oils Apothecary, I talk about some of my favorite soda pop
recipes, which by the way, here’s a cool little tip. All you need to do is get
some liquid stevia and essential oils, put it in a mug or in a cup, and mix
it up.
We love liquid Stevia. Well, if you don’t, and we hear a lot of people
don’t, well, no problem. You can put a little bit of maple syrup or a little
bit of honey, just something to properly dilute and disperse the essential
oils. Add like two drops of lime or two drops of bergamot or two drops
of orange or lemon, just two drops of essential oil. Mix it with some nice
liquid sweetener and fill it up with sparkling water. That’s it. That’s soda
pop, and it’s wonderful.
And in lesson five, we show you how to make our essential oil detox
water, which is a great way of maintaining proper hydration. Now here’s
another thing you need to know about proper hydration is don’t drink
too much.
I mean, you can overdo it. Too much of anything is still too much. Always
remember that because you just don’t want to over hydrate yourself
because that could cause a lot of gastrointestinal issues, and that could
help or cause your body not to properly digest food. And that could be
linked to gut disorders and a number of indigestion problems.
So drinking enough water, quite frankly, it takes a little time to know
what is that proper amount of water. I’ve heard a lot of different things,
different theories, different calculations, certain amount of body weight
divided by cups, whatever. Let me just tell you, common sense is when
you’re thirsty, drink.
And as a rule of thumb, I like to begin the day with four cups or roughly
one liter of water right off the cuff. I find this is a nice way also of
detoxification because it helps promote bowel movement.
And some people like to add a little bit of sea salt into that for a true
detox vacation because that will definitely stir up the bowels. But the
reality is if you start the day with a good amount of water and if you
drink periodically, you’ll find yourself when you get thirsty, you have a
little bit of water.
But don’t overdo it. Just don’t force yourself to drink because you got to
check your Fitbit, and you’ve been told to drink a certain amount of cups.
Also, when it comes to proper skin moisturization, remember you have
to avoid dehydrating chemicals in your body care. I want to refer you
back to lesson two because we cover what the primary ones are.
And don’t forget because you registered for this course, you have access
to Mama Z’s body care recipe guide and her natural cleaners guide. So
you can make a bunch of the recipes to help you properly moisturize
your skin and stop the insult because that’s really the issue here. We’ll
cover this more in the next lesson about detoxification, but to properly
moisturize your skin, you have to stop putting things on your skin that
are causing dehydration.
Also, another tip that people with eczema, psoriasis, and skin disease
have told us that have done wonderful for their skin is having a
humidifier in their house. Now, you got to be careful because if you
overdo it like anything, you could develop mold, and we do not want to
deal with a fungal issue.
But again, let common sense be your guide. And the reality is if you
live in colder climates, you will find that your air might need to be
more humid than what it is naturally. So having these as tips, and you’ll
see in other videos, in this lesson, other tips on how to properly use
humidification and other strategies to keep your skin moist.
And last of all, just to reiterate the dangers of tap water. When you go
out swimming, be very careful to avoid at all costs chlorinated pools.
And this is hard. And I get that. I’m a father of five kids, and my skin
is extremely sensitive to chlorinated water. In fact, if I ever go into a
chlorinated pool, I’ll end up getting sick. I’m very sensitive to that.
Not only does chlorine dampen your immune system, but it is extremely
dehydrating and can cause dry, cracked skin. And if you already are
dealing with dry, cracked skin, the last thing you want to do is go into a
pool. Thankfully, saltwater pools are bound. And if you have a pool in
your home, you might want to think about converting it into a saltwater
pool.
Now I know it’s a little bit more money, but the reality is the investment
upfront will pay for itself in the long run because you’re not going to
have to buy expensive chlorine and other chemicals to keep the water
pure for many years ahead. So it’s something to really consider is that is
it worth the risk? And nine times out of 10, it’s not.
Now, when it comes to naturally managing symptoms of eczema,
psoriasis, and skin disease, we recommend making some essential oil
roll-ons ahead of time, so you’ll have them ready for when you really
need them most. First off, make our anti-itch roll on. Here are the
ingredients—four drops of lavender, three drops of peppermint, and a
carrier oil of your choice.
The supplies, 10-milliliter glass roller bottle, which is essentially this size
right here. And the instructions are simple. First, you put the essential
oils in the bottle, and then you fill it up with the carrier oil, easy peasy.
205
You shake well. And then you apply over the affected area. Now a
note on the carrier oil. No matter what allergies you may have, there’s
definitely a carrier oil that’s right for you.
You can use a combination of any of these: avocado oil, fractionated
coconut, grapeseed oil, jojoba, and sweet almond, all work. The last
thing you want to do is actually put straight coconut oil in here because
it will harden at ambient room temperature.
For a more potent remedy, try our extra-strength skin-soothing roll-
on. Same instructions as the ones I just mentioned, but use these oils
instead. Five drops of lavender, three drops of geranium, three drops of
Helichrysum, and two drops of peppermint.
Now, as an important safety note, stop getting your medical advice
from uneducated bloggers. Regarding skincare articles that you may
see on popular blogs out there, there are so many errors and myths
that I stopped reading them. Most writers lack a basic understanding
of chemistry and about how essential oils actually work and how
they should be used. So here’s some common advice you’ll see in a
blogosphere that you need to be careful of.
This is myth number one: simply mix essential oils with any carrier oil
and apply them onto your face. Myth number two: dilute essential oils
with water and then apply them on your skin. Myth number three: add
essential oils to your regular face mask by adding a few drops. What’s
wrong with this ill-advised guidance?
Well, first off, when applying essential oils on the skin, great care should
be taken as they will burn the epidermis if not diluted properly. At
most, a 1% dilution, which is six drops per one ounce of carrier if you’re
dealing with some sort of itching or rash, or sensitive area.
Also, not just any carrier oil should be used. Some carrier oils will cause
breakouts on certain skin types. Coconut oil, for example, should not be
used on oily skin. And water does not dilute essential oils. This is basic
chemistry that anyone should know. Water and oils don’t mix. We were
taught that in grade school.
[10:00]
These types of errors discredit the entire aromatherapy industry and
give people a sense of warning that the rest of the information is false
or unsafe. So telling people to add a few drops to a face mask can cause
burns if not properly diluted, especially if caustic or hot oils like oregano,
thyme, or clove are used. Please, please, please be careful when you’re
using essential oils on your skin when you have eczema, psoriasis, or
skin disease.
Always dilute and take extra caution when applying on your face. And
don’t forget to download the DIY body care and natural cleaner guide
in your book you received when you registered for this course. You’ll
find additional recipes you’ll want to try out to properly moisturize your
skin and naturally approach skin disease symptoms, as well as step-by-
step instructions to convert all your favorite body care products into
homemade essential oil masterpieces.
There are many other things you can do to manage skin inflammation
and symptoms, and Mama Z and I will discuss that in just a minute. Well,
that’s it. That’s a wrap. Now, let’s make some DIY goodies with Mama Z
from our book, The Essential Oils Apothecary.
In the context of approaching eczema, psoriasis, and skin disease,
moisturization, proper moisturization should be on everyone’s thought.
It should be the forefront of everything that we do. And we know that a
lot of the over-the-counter products that people buy on a regular basis
dry the skin.
And we’ve talked about before in previous lessons, leaky skin and what
that does. It’s synonymous to leaky gut, leaky brain, where there are
micro slits in the skin due to drying or damage because of a million
things, infection, and the chemicals that many people put on their body
care.
So what we try to do is help you and help ourselves create a good,
healthy skin barrier with proper moisturization. Now, we’ve already
covered Mama Z’s oil base. And if you haven’t, check it out. Go back
to lesson one and look at how you could start making your own do-it-
yourself body care with simple salves, simple oils, body oils, facial oils.
But this recipe is taking it one step further, and this is a true healing
emollient. And that’s something that many people with skin disorders
need to focus on is not just a thin topical oil, but an emollient to
really help capture and trap in the moisture, and it doesn’t allow it to
evaporate out. And that’s a concern that a lot of people have, especially
with using essential oils. All right.
So with that said, just as a caveat, we never ever use essential oils
straight undiluted, like we’ve talked about before. That could actually
cause dermatitis or skin sensitization. We never want to do that. It’s very
drying. It’s off-gassing. You will end up wasting your money. Using this
emollient is a wonderful way of saving money, by the way, because one
drop will go a long way with the essential oils.
So with that said, this is a wonderful recipe that Mama Z has put
together to help not only us but our entire Natural Living Family online.
And you’re going to love it. You’re going to love this one. So take notes
on this one and be sure you follow this to the tee because this is a
special one.
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Sabrina: All right. Well, let’s get right on to it. So we’re going to start with
our organic unrefined shea butter. And the cool thing about the shea
butter is it comes in a block. Sometimes it comes in beads, little circular
beads. So you need to make a double boiler for this type of thing. But
one of the concerns is if you do it stovetop, if you get it hot too fast, it
can crack your jar, and you’ll end up wasting your product.
So what I like to do is I always like to use the canning jars that I have and
turn those into double boilers. So what I did—I’m going to put that over
there—is I took a canning jar, and I filled it up with the block. And then, I
filled the base of the water about halfway up the jar.
And then I put it on low for six hours. You could do less. You could go
right when it gets to liquid, but I did it for six hours, and then I just kept it
on warm, and it worked really good.
Dr. Zielinski: Can you do this with hot water in the sink if someone
doesn’t have a crock-pot?
Sabrina: So the problem is that you’re going to need to use boiling
water and do it over and over again because this is much thicker than
the coconut oil base or the Mama Z’s oil base. And what we need is
because we need it to be an emollient when we’re done, but we need
it to be liquid when we’re working with it or almost liquid, your other
option is to take a pot, fill that halfway with water, put that in there, and
then take it to a gentle--
Start with low. Work your way up. It could take longer. I just like this
method. This is one of my favorites and whatnot. So what I did is I put
that in here. We’re going to do four ounces of that, four ounces of the
Mama Z’s oil base. So we always say, if you don’t have time to DIY, there
are other options.
This one is just coconut oil and shea butter, which you could do
something similar to what we’re doing here. I just wanted to show you
that there are other products on the market that are very pure, and I’ve
tested them. The nice thing is that when you’re-- and again, you would
want to scrape that out and then melt it and then add the oils.
Dr. Zielinski: This, by the way, is a fantastic brand that is great for kids’
wash. Alaffia, I believe is how you pronounce it. And all the ingredient is
just shea butter and coconut oil. You can get this at Whole Foods, most
natural health food stores, Amazon, but they have great shampoos,
body washes, conditioners, lotion. They’re great.
Sabrina: And so they have a travel size too, but it’s going to be a similar
base. And one of the things that I like about our base versus that is
we have those other oils that we already talked about in the Mama Z’s
oil base. So you’re going to have a lot of things that are in all different
viscosities of oils. So we’re going to get to all those layers of that-- your
dermis of the skin.
Dr. Zielinski: Go back to lesson one to make Mama Z’s oil base because
you’re going to see this reoccurring throughout all of our recipes.
Sabrina: So for this soothing healing emollient, you can use a variety of
different essential oils. You could use lavender and chamomile. You can
use some of the other things, depending on what you’re doing. We are
going to use ones for scarring because, especially if you’ve had eczema,
psoriasis, you probably have certain areas that typically break out.
And we want to make sure that you don’t scar in those areas. Or if
you already have scars in those areas, that you’re taking care of them.
Equally, if you have had an incision somewhere, you’ve been using the
skin healing serum with the maximum strength variety, this would be
your next natural transition to something with more moisture that you
can really get into a scar.
This is something that I’ve had many of my friends use who have had
C-sections really to get rid of that deep scarring. I’ve seen people who’ve
had parts of skin cancer taken off of their face. That this has been an
area that they’ve been able to have little to no scar in a lot faster time
period.
So this is one of my favorite things. So for every one ounce, you’re going
to use one drop of each of these essential oils: lavender, Helichrysum,
myrrh, Roman chamomile, frankincense, geranium, lemongrass, and
rose. Rose is optional. Of course, it may be harder to find a good pure
variety. Just omit it.
Dr. Zielinski: But which rose? This is our favorite for this.
Sabrina: Bulgarian rose.
Dr. Zielinski: Yeah. There are a variety of different roses, but this is one
of our favorites. And I’m telling you something, and we know--
Sabrina: This reminds me of my grandma’s grandma. I have one, but my
grandma’s grandma’s grandma’s rose that I have out in my herb garden,
it reminds me of the fragrance of that. There are some others that are
stinkier, but we all have our own favorite rose. So you could use your
particular favorite in this.
Dr. Zielinski: And quick budget tip. This bottle can easily cost $100 to
$200. And we understand that. So here’s the thing. This is where we got
to get back into our Natural Living Family community. Hopefully, there
are two or three of your friends that want to make something like this.
Whether it’s a friend with eczema, psoriasis or drying scabbing skin, or
just someone who just wants a nice emollient, imagine breaking the
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cost.
I’ll never forget what I used to do with my mentor. We now call him Papa
Enoch. And we used to buy 13 bags of super green powder, a pound
of maca, a pound of Spirulina, a pound of wheatgrass. So we had 13
pounds of this stuff, and we used to split the cost in half and make it
together.
Sabrina: And so he thought his recipe was better. And I will tell you it
wasn’t. And so I went on my own, and we had-- this was Dr. Z’s, and this
was Mama Z’s.
Dr. Zielinski: Well, we love Mama Z’s recipe. It’s great. So again, you
might not need a whole bottle of rose, or maybe it’s out of your budget,
but hopefully, two or three of your friends can go in on this. And you
know what? That’s wonderful. Do a little make and take. How many
times we are going to have a friend over just to do some stuff together
because this is how we live.
So anyway, I don’t want some things to be cost-prohibitive because now
a $100 bottle of rose only becomes $25 for you, which that’s a lot more
affordable for some people than $100.
[20:00]
So, anyway, just think about that because this rose has been used for
millennia to helping people heal the skin, but also the mind and the
heart and the soul and so many reasons.
Rose is a wonderfully healing oil, and so are all of them. But anyway, do
what you got to do. But by the way, if you don’t have Helichrysum, you
could still do this too.
Sabrina: Correct.
Dr. Zielinski: That’s the key.
Sabrina: We have a lot of different oils here, and they all do a lot of
different things. So these were my pick for anything to do with scarring,
but if you had to leave one out, you could add a drop of another one, or
you could just omit it because it’s six to eight drops for every one ounce
of your final product that you want of essential oils.
So for today, we’re going to do four ounces of our organic unrefined
shea butter and four ounces of our Mama Z’s oil base. So I already put
the Mama Z’s oil base in here, and then I’m going to add our organic
unrefined shea butter right there. And then we’re going to add the oils,
buzz it up.
Dr. Zielinski: I’ve never seen shea butter liquid before. So when you’re
buying that whipped shea butter stuff at the store, that usually has
something in it, right? Like a coconut oil or vitamin E?
Sabrina: Right. So it’s going to eventually go back to a solid, so we
want to manipulate it when it’s like this. So it’s a lot easier to make
homogenous. And then you can go ahead. You can put it directly in
your final containers. You can wait till it starts to cool down a little bit
and then whip it at that point. But either way, here we go. See how it’s
already starting to change the color.
Dr. Zielinski: Just like our skin healing serum. We use the Magic
Bullet for a million things. If you don’t have that, there are other little
micro blenders. But again, like we asked before, in the other lesson, if
someone doesn’t have a Magic Bullet, what’s the alternative?
Sabrina: Right. You can always use your blender.
Dr. Zielinski: Okay. What about an immersion blender with one of those
buzzer things?
Sabrina: Yeah. And you could use your mixer with this.
Dr. Zielinski: This smells good. Let me smell it.
Sabrina: Yeah, that’s a good one.
Dr. Zielinski: One of the perks of the trade.
Sabrina: Absolutely. All right.
Dr. Zielinski: So, same containers that we have for the skin healing
serum?
Sabrina: Yeah. And they’re labeled, of course.
Dr. Zielinski: See, this is the beauty of aromatherapy is you buy 15
of these bottles, and you’ll end up using them, or these 15 of those
containers, and the same sort of supplies can be used for a number of
different things.
Sabrina: Right. And you’ll end up using it and giving it as gifts, doing
other things as well. But again, you can use any oils that meet your
condition, meet what you have going on. This is just the scarring
modification for the oils, but you can use the oils that you desire for it.
And it’s an awesome emollient.
I like to put this all over my body as soon as I get out of the shower. And
then, of course, if you’re working on certain areas, whether it’s tightening
and toning, scarring, different hotspots on your body, then you’re going
to address those areas more specifically as well.
Dr. Zielinski: All right. So this was the scarring recipe. What about the
basic emollient?
Sabrina: You can just use it as it is as well, but I would say lavender and
chamomile is probably my favorite one to use together.
211
Dr. Zielinski: Day to day. So you could use this exact recipe but only
apply lavender essential oil. And I would even add geranium, which
is another good cost-effective oil. Lot of women, especially that we
have found, love the smell of lemongrass. Some guys do too. I have a
lemongrass deodorant.
Sabrina: You can combine any of the ones that we have here as well.
Dr. Zielinski: Yeah. So any of these oils for your day-to-day moisturizer,
consider that. And maybe even consider doing a lavender, a lemongrass,
a geranium, a clary sage is a wonderful one, ylang ylang. The sky is the
limit.
Sabrina: Or definitely our joyful variety with our orange and vanilla,
absolute or vanilla oleoresin. And the options are endless, truly really
coming up with things that work well with your body, but then rotate
them because we do want them to keep their effectiveness as well with
those essential oils they are choosing.
Dr. Zielinski: So once you combine the shea butter with the Mama Z’s
oil base, that’s your standard. And then, you add some essential oils for
your day-to-day moisturizer, and then you use this. We’ll consider this
the scarring solution. And it’s wonderful. It really is.
It’s one thing that our heart goes out, especially women that we see with
rosacea and other conditions that affect the face, and men cystic acne
affects a lot of teenage boys. It’s a concern because people look at you,
and you’re self-conscious.
And I was there. I had cystic acne all through my teens and young adult,
and I’ll never forget that feeling that it caused for me to develop a social
phobia. It was a trigger for anxiety, panic attacks, and depression. So
getting in front of a group at school to speak wasn’t necessarily a fear of
public speaking, but it was a fear of being seen, quite frankly.
And that’s not where we need to be if we want to enjoy the abundant
life. Appreciating who we are in Christ and loving us as we’re called
to love others. And this to me is something where especially a lot of
parents or caretakers find it hard to take care of themselves because
they’re always giving. You need to love yourself.
And that might mean taking care of some scars. That might mean
doing the things that you need to do. I already know a lot of people are
watching this right now, not for you, but you should be watching for you.
You’re watching this for someone else. We know that. We know you’re
watching this to help your child or to help an elderly parent or someone
else, which is good, but what about you?
And maybe this is something that maybe you need to invest a little bit of
time and money to. And once you start to appreciate, and once you’re
not ashamed of how you look, how you feel, that opens up the door to
a whole new world. I was there. You were there. And a lot of our Natural
Living Family members were there.
And so consider this part of your love care routine, but also as a way to
help you. And we hope, by the grace of God, completely heal any skin
condition that you might be battling.
When it comes to symptom-based management for a variety of chronic
conditions, including eczema, psoriasis, skin disease, headaches,
migraines, and all sorts of stuff, even infection we have found--
Sabrina: Even PMS.
Dr. Zielinski: Well, I don’t deal with that. Thank God. But thanks for
mentioning that because we use--
Sabrina: Or childbirth.
Dr. Zielinski: Thank God. I don’t deal with that too. We use cold and hot
compresses on a regular basis, and I’ll never forget. Actually, the first
time I was ever exposed to a hot compress was when you had thrush
and the baby, baby Esther. And we used a warm, hot compress of
Roman chamomile to help with the infection you had on your nipple.
So Mama Z and baby Esther were passing around thrush when you were
nursing. And I saw the healing power of Roman chamomile tea, not even
essential oil, Roman chamomile tea, and a hot compress. And I was like,
oh, this stuff is unbelievable.
Sabrina: And he would get it so hot. He’d have to wear gloves all the
way up to here in order to go huff, huff, huff, and then give me one and I
would soak it and then soak it.
Dr. Zielinski: Hot compresses, they’re fantastic. So we have a remedy
here to help soothe the symptoms related to anxiety and stress related
to migraines and headaches. And especially for people that have any
sort of skin conditions, we highly encourage you to look at this recipe
very seriously and try it at home because this is super easy to make. So
go at it.
Sabrina: Now, one of the things to remember is if you know some of
the situations that you’re battling with, picking your oils accordingly, and
then what I recommend is pick washcloths that correspond with what
you’re doing so that you know that this is XYZ oils, and then this is--
Dr. Zielinski: We have blue, white.
Sabrina: Yeah, and then for the kids, we have all these different kids’
washcloths as well. So you could vary it as well if it’s for the kids. These
are organic cotton ones. Now, I want you to see the different phases.
213
So this was just taken from the freezer. It’s a block. Feel it. Solid. But it’s
yellow, so I know that this was the last batch that I made of peppermint.
And then this has been out, so it’s nice and heavy, but it’s filled with
water, but you can see the water’s not draining out everywhere. It’s just
got--
Dr. Zielinski: Will that ever get back to white?
Sabrina: This was always yellow.
Dr. Zielinski: What? The towel was yellow?
[30:00]
Sabrina: Yes.
Dr. Zielinski: Oh, like that oil didn’t stain that?
Sabrina: No. And all my towels always come back out in the wash, and
quite frankly, the wash then smells real good too.
Sabrina: So what we’re going to do is for our cold compresses, we’re
going to do peppermint, and then for our hot compresses, we’re going
to do chamomile and lavender, which covers a variety of different things.
Dr. Zielinski: Well, again, peppermint, we’re focused on pain symptoms,
and this is good for joint pain, headaches, migraines. You can just
put it on the forehead, put it on the back of your head. Lavender and
chamomile, great soothing, healing, wonderful for infection, especially
fungal infection on your skin, eczema, psoriasis, thrush. Again, that was
a fungal infection. And just in general, it’s a wonderful, nice, warm, good
for pain.
Sabrina: Right. So, for instance, my daughter had PMS and was having
some cramping. So I gave her one just like this. She kept it actually in
the bag. She had it right on her tummy. And when she went to bed, she
wanted a new one. She just stuck it in her little pajama pants, closed
them up, and just had it rest there.
So you can use it in a variety of ways. I also used the peppermint
postpartum, just taking it out of its little bag and putting it in my
underwear. You can use those again on the front of the head, the back
of the neck. But the hot compresses, one of the things that I liked to
do is when I’m in labor, use those so that I can soothe when the baby’s
coming for the pushing phase of labor.
And then it really mitigates a lot of the extra pain, and it allows you
because you have all this hot, it makes the contraction happen. So I
would do it ahead of time when I was ready, and it forces that blood
flow. And then you have a contraction when you’re ready for it, rather
than when it surprises you.
Dr. Zielinski: It sounds like we have to do a natural home birth class, but
a little outside the scope of this. So guys, bear with us. We’re getting into
the headaches, anxiety, stress, and fungal infections.
Sabrina: But the nice thing is that these three oils used in different
ways cover so many different things. So we’ve got six cloths, and I’ve
got two ounces of carrier oil and 20 drops of essential oils. So in this
one, I use the jojoba, and I use 10 drops of lavender, 10 drops of Roman
chamomile. This one, I have two ounces of sweet almond oil, and I have
peppermint essential oil.
Dr. Zielinski: Twenty drops, right?
Sabrina: Yeah. So what I’m going to do-- this is not boiling. This is hot.
You could make it boiling. I’m going to do this over top of the towels
here, put it on high. Then once it gets nice and warm, I’ll put it to low and
then keep warm, and then those will keep warm. And actually, you can
use this for quite a while.
It won’t burn your towels as long as you continue to add water in there.
And so we’ll have them going for quite a while. And you can also use
a mini crock-pot as well if you wanted to do that. And you know what?
We’ve done it without a crock-pot with a boiling pot of water on the
stove. So you have a lot of different options.
Just remember, if it’s on the stove, you’re going to want to wear gloves
or something in order to pick it out with tongs and kind of wring it out to
put it on those various areas of your body. Okay. So what we’re going to
do, we’re going to just pour it over top of each of these cloths.
Dr. Zielinski: And the reason why we dilute with the essential oils,
one, it acts as a carrier, and the carrier oil separates, protects the skin,
so you’re not just putting straight essential oils on top. And we always
want to stress that. And one little hack too, by the way, if you don’t
have Roman chamomile because some suppliers don’t offer Roman
chamomile all year round. It is actually a precious, expensive oil that’s in
season only certain times of the year.
Chamomile tea works great. You can steep three or four bags of organic
chamomile tea, and you can add that onto your water as well. And that’s
a nice little hack—same thing with peppermint tea. You can use that as
well. I would say try that in addition to your peppermint oil, but again, if
you need something in a pinch and if you don’t have peppermint oil, try
tea.
Sabrina: Okay. So now that these are covered with all of our water and
our essential oils, we will then go put the lid on, and then we’re going to
let them get warm. And then we’ll check that out later. Okay.
215
Now for our other mixture, we’re going to take and pour our 20 drops
of peppermint. Now we’ve got a variety of different cloths here. And
so what we want to do is we want to make sure that we soak it all up.
We’re going to put more water in here, and here we go. We want it to all
be covered. These are all covered. Each one of these is nice and wet. All
right. Now I’m going to want to--
Dr. Zielinski: And you want to fill the water to the very top, right?
Sabrina: No, you don’t. You want to make sure that you are halfway. So
you’re halfway. So if your towels are this thick, you want water--
Dr. Zielinski: So you’re putting water up to here?
Sabrina: Yes. That’s correct.
Dr. Zielinski: Okay. Not covering the towels?
Sabrina: Correct.
Dr. Zielinski: Okay.
Sabrina: Okay. So now I want to squeeze these out because I don’t want
to have too much oils in those top ones. We want to really intermix all of
this, but I also want these to kind of be pre-folded because I’m going to
be rolling them to put them in there. That’s why I keep the shape. So I’ve
got two piles. All right. And then I’m going to take them and kind of set
them in here.
And what I like to do is put these then in the fridge, and if they soak
up all of the water and they’re more dry, then I’m going to add a little
bit more of our water to it just to give it a little bit more. I’m going to
squeeze it again and do it just like I did.
This is pretty good. But then once it’s cold and if you have time-- now,
let’s say you didn’t have time. You could just take them at this point, roll
them up and put them into the freezer. Okay. If you have time, it’s nice
to cool them before you do the freezer thing. You have less of the ice
chunks and--
Dr. Zielinski: So we are using warm water. We’re not doing this with
cold water.
Sabrina: Correct. We just want it to be lightly warm. It does not have to
be boiling. Now when I’m bathing or something like that, I’m going to
make sure it’s boiling, and then I’m going to put it right in and put it to
low. But since we’re doing cold compresses, just warm. We want it to just
be able to not be ice cold on our fingers because you already have the
peppermint, which is going to make it really cold anyways.
Dr. Zielinski: By the way, that’s a key. If you get something in your eye
or if you have to itch, be very careful because you don’t think of it until
your hands are saturated with essential oils that you scratch your eye or
your face, and you get oils in your eye.
That happens quite frankly oftentimes for people that use essential
oils, especially beginners. Here’s the thing. If that ever happens, don’t
worry about it. It will burn, and expect it to burn, especially if you have
peppermint on your finger and use to scratch your inner eyes.
Sabrina: Beginners? What are you talking about? I could do this right
now on accident.
Dr. Zielinski: But you shouldn’t. You’ve been trained. But what do you
do?
Sabrina: You have to consciously make sure that you washed your
hands with your healthy hand wash that has essential oils in it. Wash
your hands off, dry them off fully, but even pros make mistakes. And
I’ll tell you many times I’ve done the oil pulling, grabbed clove, or an
immunity blend. Just from twisting off the lid, sometimes you can get a
little bit on your finger, and it can be an oucher.
Dr. Zielinski: What do you do? The easy solution is get some olive oil
in your pantry or coconut oil and use that as a wash. Don’t use soap.
Don’t use water. Use that. It’s the best way because, again, oil dilutes the
essential oil. So your fatty oil dilutes the essential oil.
So same concept as we use for all of our DIY preparations, as you read
in our book and all of our classes, that’s the same concept. And so, hey,
it’ll happen. Maybe, hopefully, it doesn’t, but you might want to also be
cognizant of your hands. Like if your hands are so sensitive because of
an outbreak or a rash, you might actually need to wear gloves to do this.
And that’s fine too.
Sabrina: And the great thing is that this is so diluted that I’m not worried
about it right now, but you’re going to take your washcloth. So we had
them in half. You could just leave them in half and then roll them up like
I did with that one. Or you could start right from the start there and roll
it all the way up like that.
I always recommend to individually bag them, whether it’s a sandwich-
size bag or a snack-size bag, and then that way you put them in. And
then every time I rotate color. So this is what was in the freezer. Now
we’re going to green. So we know that this is the peppermint, green
peppermint, and then you want to make sure you can put a label on the
outside. We go through these pretty fast.
As soon as we go through them, they’re going to go in the wash, and
then they’re going to go back in the area that once I collect all of them,
that it’s time for the next batch.
217
[40:00]
So you can get as creative as you want with all of that. But again, with
these, now you’re going to make sure that your water is halfway, put the
lid on, and go ahead and put it to high.
Once it starts bubbling and you’ll kind of hear it either rattling, or you’ll
see that the water is bubbling, turn it down to low. And then if it’s still
pretty hot and you don’t really need that, or you just want it to be warm
for when it’s time to use it, then you can go ahead and put it down to
warm, and that’s it.
Dr. Zielinski: Be careful. Just don’t grab it. Get some salad tongs or
something that you-- just be careful because this will be super hot, and
then it’ll be like a hot tamale for a couple of seconds, but it’s wonderfully
soothing. Hey, the sky’s the limit with this, and you could do a lot of
different things.
And so, when you look at the different remedies and blends that we put
together, these are great bases—a great starting point. You mentioned
birth, and you mentioned cramps. Every woman trying to look at
compresses for those situations need to consider geranium and clary
sage and ylang ylang—great women’s health oils.
Maybe you’re looking for a little more power pack punch in your pain-
relieving blend. Hey, Copaiba, frankincense, wintergreen, orange
essential oil. They are wonderfully pain-relieving anti-inflammatory
essential oils, anxiety, stress. The sky’s the limit.
Try some tree oils, pine, Douglas fir, cypress, even sandalwood—
wonderful, calming, soothing, essential oils. But more not like put you to
bed kind of calming soothing, but at an emotional, psychological level,
they’ve been shown over and over again in the research to help with
stress and anxiety.
All right. So the sky’s the limit. Again, this is our base, and this is
specifically for skin healing, for headache, migraine management,
something very simple, something effective. But we encourage you to
practice and have fun with this and share ideas with us online. Share
ideas with your friends because, really, the sky’s the limit.
Sabrina: Absolutely. The sky’s the limit.
Dr. Zielinski: Enjoy your compresses. Super easy.
ESSENTIAL SECRETS FOR
ACHIEVING YOUR HEALTHIEST,
YOUNGEST-LOOKING SKIN
Guest: Brian Vaszily
Brian: Hey, Brian Vaszily here. Welcome to the essential secrets to

achieve your healthiest youngest looking skin. Now, we have a lot of
ground to cover that will lead to the most amazing skin possible for you,
whatever your age or circumstances. And will also lead to some pretty
impressive changes to your health overall, in some cases, dramatic
changes. And in some cases will possibly be life saving for certain
people. You’ll see what I mean. So let’s jump in and get started right
away.
Let’s first talk about me because you’re going to want to know, well, who
is this guy teaching me all this good stuff here. Well, my name is Brian
Vaszily. Again, that rhymes with Paisley, even though I’m wearing a plaid
shirt in that picture and not Paisley. But I have been a natural health
researcher and a pretty well-known natural health advocate now for well
over 20 years.
I’ve worked in front of the camera, behind the scenes, you name it.
Love digging in deep, deep, deep inside of the research. A lot of people
call me a research geek because I love all the journals and I dig deep in
all the research. Worked with many folks whose names you probably
know. Well known MD’s who embrace natural health and other
medical oriented experts behind a lot of different organizations that
I’ve helped as well. And I’m the founder of my own organization called
theartofantiaging.com where we now have over 400,000 members.
And in a nutshell, what we do there is we provide people really, really
important life-changing information. The most effective steps to look
your best feel, your best, avoid—overcome possibly—disease and live
long doing it. And I’m the founder of Purity Woods. That’s a more recent
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company and a really fast growing organization because there we’re
dedicated to providing people the cleanest, most effective skincare
products out there. They are all USDA Certified Organic. That means
independent of the company through some strict processes. We’ll get to
a bit of that later on. And they are fantastic for you. So Purity Woods, my
little plug is done.
I am also a proud husband and father to four kids. And inside my
household, I’m really renowned for my terribly funny, and I stress the
‘terribly’ in some cases, bad jokes, for example, what is the best time
to go to the dentist? ‘Tooth early’. These occasionally pop out of me so
forgive, but smiles and laughter are always good medicine. So enough
about me. Let’s talk about the more important thing here, you.
Let me over-generalize, but in some cases it really pays just to have
this big concept in mind. After literally decades, decades, digging into
research, teaching, I’m told now it’s got to be in the millions through all
these various means of people. I’ve narrowed down what good health
including for your skin, for your body, for your brain really amounts
to. And it really can be boiled down to putting the best stuff inside of
you and keeping the worst stuff out. That goes for your emotional and
mental health as well by the way, not just the physical. But really it is
that simple at the end of the day. What do you allow inside of your
being, your body, your mind? What do you keep out? This matters in a
big way.
Now, when it comes to beautiful, healthy, your youngest looking skin,
there’s a lot we can cover. And I’m going to brief on a lot of pieces that
people have heard elsewhere and know because really your skin’s health
and beauty is just an outward manifestation, just an outward billboard,
if you will, of your overall health. It really is one and the same. But where
I’m going to specifically focus today is where a lot of people have little in
some cases, no awareness yet. It’s monumentally important to achieve
your most beautiful skin and to achieve optimal health and avoid ill
health and possibly even overcome ill health.
Now, please do listen particularly closely today if of course you do have
skin issues, eczema, acne, all the various sorts, but also if and/or let’s
put it that way, you have other symptoms and you are not quite sure of
the causes. That could be dizziness, headaches. It could be fatigue for
sure, and all kinds of other digestive systems and so on and so forth. Pay
particular attention if you want beautiful skin and you have these issues.
In all my years’ experience and researching this and seeing results,
the number one problem, what is the biggest problem today? Typical
cosmetics and personal care products.
As you see on the screen here, that is because they can wreak
unbelievable havoc on your skin, including and in many cases, especially
those that advertise, they’re going to help your skin. If they’re loaded
with toxins, if they contain these synthetic ingredients, don’t believe the
hype. We’re going to get deeper under this. Sure, they may help you like
fast food in a way is good in the moment, but they’re not good for your
skin at all. Worse still, they can wreak havoc on your hormones, on your
brain, on your digestive system on heart health, and so many different
aspects of your health.
And the big problem, the reason this is the biggest problem today
is because again, so many people are just not aware of how big this
problem is. Including many health conscious otherwise people who
focus deeply on eating the right foods and so on and so forth and yet, a
lot of people know very little about this still compared to other aspects
of health. So let’s dive a bit deeper here.
Typical cosmetics, I will say are the worst offenders for toxins that
people are putting in allowing inside of their bodies. Now, why is that
so? You can make a case that toxins in the air, especially inside the home
are also pretty darn bad and they are. But those two areas, the toxins
and personal care products and cosmetics and in the air are really bad.
Now, let me focus specifically on cosmetics and personal care products
and say, why, why?
Because we actively are feeding our baby bodies the chemicals that are
in these products. And there are thousands of chemicals overall allowed
in the United States in these products. Now, in the US the average
woman uses 12 personal care products per day that contain on average,
168 different chemicals. The numbers are, I think about one half that
and rising for men somewhere in that vicinity.
Here’s one of the big kickers, in the European Union and other countries,
over 1300 different chemicals have been banned because of their
toxicity. Because they range from carcinogens, to potential carcinogens,
to endocrine disruptors, which is basically means hormone disruptors to
high irritants, allergens, and so on and so forth. So 1300 plus chemicals
banned elsewhere, here in the United States just 11 chemicals banned.
I’m going to get a bit into why, because you can’t avoid that question
when you hear that statistic.
So let’s talk about common perceptions of the skin briefly here. It is
often treated like a separate part of the body if it’s treated like the body
at all. Some cases, it’s treated more like clothing in a way for some
people. We don’t tend to think of it in the same way that we might think
of other organs inside our body, our hearts, our brains, our lungs, and
so on and so forth, our kidneys. But it is an organ. The skin is an organ.
In fact, it’s the largest organ in your body.
And yes, just like you consume food through your mouth, the skin also
consumes. Your body consumes through your skin. If the molecules of
whatever you’re applying, whether it’s spray on, rub on, whoever you’re
applying this, feeding this to your skin. If these molecules and all these
different chemicals are small enough, they penetrate your skin. And
the kicker here is that, of course, most of the products have chemicals
that are designed to penetrate your skin. That’s why they have whatever
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effect they have.
[10:00]
So your body is eating whatever you apply to your skin in the very same
way that you eat through your mouth. It’s going inside your body. We’ll
go deeper. One reason that typical cosmetics are the worst offender is
because yes, in the foods you put in your mouth and eat, you do have
toxic ingredients where as a collective, we’re far more aware of that
today then than what I’m delving into. This information is about 10 years
behind where food was maybe 10, 12 years ago, and the knowledge
about it collectively. So we all know there are foods out there, plenty of
them, processed foods and so on and so forth that can have some to
many toxins in it.
And we try to avoid those. It’s a good move to make. When you do eat
them through your mouth, though, they at least go through various
filters, we’ll call them in your body. The gastric juices, your liver being
the primary filter overall. In other words, your body then engages and
tries to kick out as many of these toxins as it can. When you eat through
your skin, and again, that is exactly what you’re doing with cosmetics
and personal care products, deodorant, anti-aging creams, the whole
shebang. When you eat through your skin, the body has no such filters
in place.
In other words, these ingredients can, and many of them will and do
penetrate into your bloodstream where they will then be sent around
your organs throughout your body. Now, one key point I really want you
to remember is that not only is your skin an organ, but your skin is a key
part of your immune system. In fact, it’s the front line of your immune
system. Its job is to be the first one to stop things trying to get in from
out there, through the air, again, through different things. Anything it
comes in contact with that may have germs or any other number of
potentially pathogenic things in it. Its job is to try to put that out.
Now, again, typical cosmetics and personal care products are the
worst offenders for toxins people are putting in because we are
seriously compromising its ability to do its job of keeping these harmful
microorganisms out when we’re overtaxing it day after day after day
with toxic ingredients. In other words, let me put this in real layman’s
terms. It should be spending its time, skin, fighting the natural invaders
out there from the air, from surfaces we come in contact with where
germs reside and so on and so forth.
However, we’re overloading it in a big way because we’re busy without
even thinking about it, putting these highly synthetic ingredients on
our skin, spraying our hair where it sticks to our scalp, putting the
deodorants under our arm that contain these synthetic and toxic
ingredients. That is anything but harmless folks. That is the complete
opposite. It makes your immune system weaker to fight what it’s
supposed to be fighting. Hence already, you’re starting to see why at
the very start I said, “This can be potentially lifesaving information,
health-changing information.” Most certainly changes to the appearance
of your skin in a positive way if you implement even some of what I
discussed with you today, so let’s continue here.
I liken cosmetics and personal care products to fast food. Why? Well, first
of all, one image I want to try to cement in your head so you remember
this, the next time you go to a grocery store and you’re pushing your
grocery cart down the cosmetics and personal care products aisle. Do
remember this, you are in a food aisle. It’s not separate. It’s just, you’re
feeding as I’ve stressed a lot. And I will keep stressing. It’s just, you’re
feeding your body in a different way through your skin, these products.
But it is a food aisle.
Remember that because then in that way, you will automatically start
being as conscious about what you’re feeding that way as you probably
already are when you go to any of the other food aisles, the produce
and all the other aisles in the store where you make conscious choices.
So not only is it food, but most of these products, these cosmetics, these
personal care products are specifically fast food. Now, what do I mean?
Well, why do people eat fast food? Here’s why, it’s scientifically designed,
it’s a bit nefarious, but it’s true. There are people who are highly trained
scientists who work hard to make that fast food taste and feel amazing
in our mouths.
They’ve manipulated these ingredients so it has the perfect mouth
feel, that salty, sweet balance, all these different aspects. We all know
it’s terrible for us, but for many people, unless you’ve really trained
yourself back to true whole foods, healthy foods, plant-based foods and
all that. But for most people, even those who are conscious of how bad
this is and make an effort to avoid it, it still can taste really good in the
moment. But we all know with fast food, it may feel good in the moment
and it’s designed to. It’s designed to be nearly addictive if not downright
addictive. We all know in the long run, it’s terrible for us. Even in the
medium run, even in the short run, in the next day, or even hours later,
we feel like garbage from eating it.
Our bodies are saying, “This is terrible. We don’t need this.” Well,
cosmetics and personal care products, typical cosmetic and personal
care products are designed the same way. Let’s focus on anti-aging
cream, that’s a great example here. When they contain all kinds of
synthetic and toxic ingredients in these products, they know they being
the manufacturers that these ingredients are going to actually give you
results in the very short term.
So you’re going to put that stuff on your skin, on your face, around your
eyes, wherever you desire the effect. And the very next day you’re going
to be potentially at least like, “Wow, this stuff works. I don’t care if there’s
synthetic toxic stuff in here. I’ve lost all my crow’s feet.” Momentarily,
in the short term, they have the desired effect that people seek. The
problem is ironically, these very same ingredients cause early aging.
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They are heavily, as I noted a bit earlier, linked to all sorts of health
issues, symptoms that we talked about.
If you do have eczema, psoriasis, if you do have headaches and you’re
not sure why or dizziness, or gastric, digestive oriented issues, and
you’re not certain why, or you’re fatigued all the time, strongly consider
this being the reason. Meanwhile, ironically, again, I think it’s just really
ironic that these very same ingredients that have this positive potentially
short-term effect can lead to severe, far more severe wrinkles and fine
lines and other issues like that. Of course they can because they’re
synthetic, we’re not designed for petroleum based products. And yet
that’s what so many of these ingredients are.
So just remember, it’s like fast food. They’re to get you. They’re trying to
grab you because there’s these really short-term wow results just like
salt, sweet foods and the balance in your mouth of these fast foods.
Well, they’re trying to grab you, please remember that.
Now, regarding the ingredients that are synthetic, toxic found in so
many, I won’t dwell long on this. But it’s worth knowing this, that there’s
basically five categories of ingredients that that can be harmful; direct
carcinogens, meaning cancer causing ingredients to be blunt about
it, hidden carcinogens. Let me side note on that real quick. What that
means is, you remember chemistry class back in high school, you know
that when you mix chemical A and chemical B, you get some other kind
of chemical. And when you mix three chemicals or four or five or six,
you’re going to get some other weird stuff.
They being these massive companies in some cases, smaller companies
and others, they’re not required to test virtually any of this as I’ll dip
into in a moment here. But they’re certainly not required to test what
happens when three different chemicals, synthetic artificial things that
they’re putting in these products mixed together and what they create.
Well, what they create is often another potentially harmful chemical.
So you don’t even know what you’re getting in these products. Even if
they list all the ingredients, they’re not really listing all the ingredients
because we don’t know what’s going on. And there has been multiple
studies, including from EWG, the Environmental Working Group showing
there are these offshoot or hidden carcinogens being created from the
mix of some of these ingredients. As I mentioned, there’s endocrine
disrupting ingredients, well over 200 from a study I saw that are allowed
in our products. Some of them quite common in our products and of
course, allergens.
[20:10]
And then here’s one of the worst ingredients; penetrators because
penetrators are ingredients added to make all the other ingredients, all
these other synthetic and toxic ingredients go deeper into your skin and
work faster. In other words, it’s sending the bad stuff deeper and faster
inside your body. Kind of scary, big question here.
What? Wait a minute. I thought somebody was watching our backs.
Nobody’s out there watching all this and at least making sure we’re
somewhat safe, a little safe. No, they’re not. In fact, I have seen it said
time and again, that the cosmetic and personal care industry is the most
on you regulated industry in the United States of America, the most.
Now, that’s because back in 1938, that’s how far back any substantial
change or legislation goes. The FDA basically, not basically did say, “Hey,
personal care and self-care products, industry, cosmetics, industry,
you’re going to regulate yourself.” And that’s been the case since then.
Unfortunately, it’s turned into a Wild West situation. A Wild West
situation, because literally you can put anything you want inside of a
formula, call it anti-aging formula again, let’s use that example or a
deodorant. You can put anything you want in there, stick it on a shelf
and sell it. Now, of course, these organizations are not going to want to
put anything in these products that has an immediate negative effect on
your body, because it will easily be linked to their product. They will be
found out, they will be sued and so on and so forth. So of course they
know that the ingredients and the amounts that they’re adding them are
not going to have any immediate impact in many cases. In some cases,
they do have immediate impact in terms of folks with allergies and so
forth.
But in most cases, they’re like, “Yes, we’ve tested these enough to know
they’re not going to hurt you now.” But they have not done long-term
testing on these ingredients. And in many cases, they actually know that
some of these ingredients are in fact, carcinogenic, are in fact, endocrine
disrupting or hormone disrupting. Here’s the logic. Here’s the reasoning
that if you got them to talk at all, they might confess and they would say,
“Yeah, okay, listen, sure. We know there’s ingredients that are potentially
carcinogenic and potential endocrine disruptors, but they are in such
minute quantities in our products, that they’re not going to hurt you. No
worries.”
And here’s my response, which is, you know what? I think I might be
okay with that if I use deodorant one day, a year or once in my whole
life. But guess what? Let’s remember this. We are applying again, 12
products for women on average daily containing 168 different chemicals
day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year,
decade after decade. It really is like death by a thousand cuts. In other
words, small quantities of all these various potentially toxic chemicals
slowly, each day, going into our bloodstream, adding up, adding up,
adding up.
Nobody’s ever tested this in these organizations, these giant, mammoth
organizations that make these products. You don’t test that, you don’t
look five years, six years, seven years down the line. You don’t test, they
don’t even test again, the mix of two different chemicals, much less
this so. In the world of cosmetics and personal care products, it truly is
buyer beware. These things do add up. They have rather quick negative
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effects. They can have rather quick negative effects on your skin. Again,
the next day your skin might look great seriously, in some cases, a week
later, not to mention a month and so on and so forth and further down
the line.
Your skin is a billboard again for your health. It’s the first announcement
it’s often the quickest to respond, whether it’s a positive or negative
change. And so first and foremost thing to often go if you’re putting bad
things into your body, through your skin will be your skin. It’s going to
announce to the world first, “Huh? Not so healthy here.”
And then other pieces and parts of your body, all these other symptoms
we talk about often will follow. So this last line here you see on the
screen, beauty industry alone is worth $532 billion. I don’t think I need
to say much more about if you’re wondering, well, why do they get away
with it, why are there only 11 chemicals banned in cosmetics here in the
US versus 1300 elsewhere? I think that pretty much says it all right there.
It’s a big industry. And that doesn’t even include by the way, the chemical
industry that benefits big time from the sales of its chemicals to the
beauty and the cosmetics industry.
So I often get the question, “Well, what are the worst ones? Can you tell
me the five to look for? The 10 to look for? By now, you probably get it
though. There’s not just five or 10 or 15 or 20 or 30. There are over 1300
chemicals banned elsewhere that are allowed here and are used here.
There’s over 4,000 different chemicals used in fact. There’s no way me,
you or anybody is going to know all of the wrong ones to look for, nor do
we have the time to do that.
You turn these bottles around sometimes and seriously, I don’t need
to tell you. In some cases, it looks like a horror novel of science-y
sounding terrible ingredients and in many cases they are. Who is going
to scan through all that? “Oh, it’s okay. That one’s not.” You can’t do that.
Nonetheless, take a look at the screen here. Next screen too. I will show
you some of the worst offenders that you may often see.
Now, that first one at the top there, fragrance. I do want to highlight that
right now for you. If you see a product with fragrance, scent, perfume,
seriously think about putting it down and running the other way. Why
is that? Well, it says right there. It can be any of over 4,000 chemicals,
including; and again, the EWG and others had dug into this, potential
endocrine disruptors, carcinogens, and so on and so forth.
Here’s the kicker, you don’t know, and they being the companies that
make these products are not required to tell you what is in fragrance,
why? Because it’s a trade secret. So they could throw, and they do
anything they want in there often purportedly to make the smell. These
sweet artificial smells that, many of us have been trained to equate with
quality or the thing working. Don’t fall for that.
But yeah, fragrance, perfume’s a fancy way of saying it, scent is a real
straightforward way. These could be anything. When I’m at the grocery
store, in the cosmetics food aisle, there it is, I’m always looking and first
and foremost, I’m looking for that ingredient. Like if it’s in there, I’m not
doing it. Because I don’t know what you’re putting in there that I’ll be
feeding my body through my skin. Briefly parabens, we probably are
more familiar with that. Now, that’s gotten the spotlight in recent years.
I will get to in a moment greenwashing, be careful because just because
on the front of a package, just says paraben-free does not mean it’s
not a toxic product, because that is just a marketing catch phrase now.
Sure. It’s paraben-free but it may well contain any number of other
ingredients that you don’t want in your body. So don’t necessarily fall for
what’s on the front of a label.
Here’s some more for you, formaldehyde. That’s an interesting one. It’s
used as a preservative in cosmetics, and it’s also a known carcinogen.
Look it up. It’s linked to neuro-toxicity, asthma, other issues. And it’s in
all sorts of products. Yes. This is the same ingredient that you used in
high school biology to preserve frogs and so forth. And we’re feeding
our bodies this in some cases, because it’s so prevalent day after day
after day.
Triclosan is another interesting one to be aware of. This was banned
from hand soaps in 2016, and yet it’s allowed in every other type or
many other types of products still. So they even know it has issues. They
banned it from one type of product, but it’s in anti-aging creams and so
on and so forth. Kind of mind boggling on that one. So we’ll jump back
to that a little bit more, but I do just want to highlight since this is about
your healthiest, youngest looking skin and how to achieve that first and
foremost, and the great health that goes along with it, they really are
partners. They’re one and the same. Great health, you’re going to have
your best skin, not great health, you’re not going to have your best skin
and so on and so forth.
[30:00]
But let’s focus specifically many of the same key steps that you want to
put in play for your overall health to live long and to live well are going
to help your skin. So it’d be an injustice if I didn’t just briefly jump into
those. So in addition to not feeding your skin and therefore the rest
of your body cosmetics and personal care products that contain these
toxins and these synthetic ingredients and so forth. And instead, which
we’ll get to at the end, feeding your skin really healthy ingredients, that’s
a big impact point right there. But we’ll get to that.
Also of course, and I’m going to remind you, even though you’ve heard
this 50,000 times, hydrate, hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. Drink your water,
drink your water. The rules are different on this. This whole thing about
eight glasses a day, nobody actually can pinpoint where that started
and there’s not any, again, I’m a research geek and there’s not some
real deep research that’s showed that anywhere. Not 10 years ago, not
20 years ago, not recently. However, the latest insights that I’ve heard is
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from some really highly qualified MD friends of mine, they’re saying, “Try
to drink at least one to two glasses more than you do on a daily basis or
beyond your current thirst.”
Of course, we all know water is essential for good skin. So is proper
sleep. Oops, sorry. So proper sleep, some key points to help enable that
really you’ve heard this perhaps before, and it’s just finding more and
more how true it is trying not to get any of that blue light that’s emitted
from screens, computer screens, phone screens, TV screens. Try not to
get any of that type of light, at least two hours before bed.
Try to get your seven hours or more up to a point per night, seven to
eight hours. Try to go to bed around the same time and wake up at the
same time daily, including weekends and sleep in a dark and quiet room
as much as is possible. Sorry. So vitamin D, very important for skin. Very
important to avoid too much sun, very important not to not get any
sun. Now, I’m not going to dig deep into this. This has certainly been
discussed elsewhere many times, but your 15 minutes a day in the sun
at least is a good idea.
If you know you’re going to be out in the sun excessively, like I am. I’m an
avid gardener. I love gardening, and that’s why I’m out there a lot. Then
use your zinc oxide based skin sunscreen if you’re going to do that. Or
do what I do, which is, wear a hat and longer sleeve clothing. If I’m going
to be out there because sun is good for you, but excess sun meaning
you’re to the point of potentially getting burned, not good for your skin,
of course.
Combat excess stress. You’ve heard this elsewhere. It matters for your
health and it matters certainly for your skin. Look at any person who’s
gone through a lot of stress and you could see it in their skin. It’s kind
of telling. So practice techniques, tactics for that covered elsewhere. Of
course, I’ve said it a million times here regarding feeding your body. So
it’s true, of course, with the foods you do put in your mouth versus the
foods you’re putting on your skin. Eat the best and try to avoid those
that lead to a terrible skin. Excess sugar being perhaps the top culprit on
that artificial ingredients are way up there, processed grains, which act
in your body much like sugar anyway. Oils, meats, dairy, none of these
are great for your skin, certainly not in access.
Plant-based foods certainly are, especially, you could see the list here,
take a screenshot if you want. But surprising one that most people
don’t realize is mushrooms are fantastic for your health in many ways,
including vibrant, glowing skin. If you can eat mushrooms, meaning
you’re not allergic, eat mushrooms, eat a variety of mushrooms. There’s
almost nothing better in terms of consuming through your mouth foods
than mushrooms. Avocados, nuts are fantastic for your skin. I could go
on and on here with all this types of stuff, but I did want to cover that
and you’ll see it on the screen. There’s some key, key foods for you.
Now, let’s jump back to the big key again, the highly toxic lifestyle that
we’re living, where we are feeding our bodies through cosmetics and
personal care products. Look, let’s jump back to that because that’s
where I wanted to put the spotlight in this discussion, because small
changes in this area can lead to dramatic positive changes for you.
You’re going to be surprised in a really positive way. And the beautiful
thing is that as you see here, in a world where making important
changes can feel so difficult, not feeding your skin and therefore not
feeding your body the wrong thing ingredients, and instead feeding your
skin the right ingredients is pretty darn easy to do. It’s a pretty darn easy
change to make.
And I mean, versus relative to diet and exercise. We know we have to
do those things. We know the diet in terms of what we put into our
bodies, through our mouth. We know the changes we have to make
in most cases, but it’s really hard to do. And it’s so easy to fall off the
bandwagon, so to speak or off the wagon of doing so. We know about
movement and exercise and how important it is, but it’s very challenging
to do. So the beauty in the area of positive ingredients to feed your skin
and negative ones to avoid is relative to those sorts of changes, quite
easy. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s low hanging fruit as people say.
So what do you do? Well, these changes are going to result in, again, the
skin is this incredibly … it’s one of your best friends. Here’s why, it’s so
receptive to positive change just as it reacts quickly to negative things a
nd looks real, real fast when you’re doing the wrong things. It’s so quick
to respond to positive changes that you make, that you’re going to be
surprised in a good way when you make just some of the changes that
we’ve talked about, certainly when it comes to reducing or eliminating
the toxic products and then the rest of your body will follow.
As it says on the screen here, preventing and reversing potentially
disease is a result of these. Because again, toxins lead to disease,
reducing that you’re going to experience positive changes. So what I
would suggest a lot of people do, because again, we covered how it’s not
easy to look and try to scan for potentially thousands of ingredients you
want to avoid. And I’m going to get a little deeper into what you should
be looking for in a moment. But you want to take inventory of all the
cosmetics and personal care products that you routinely use.
A grand statement will be this; if they’ve got toxins, potential toxins,
synthetics in them, the ideal would be shove them all in the garbage,
literally. Don’t give them away to other people. You’re not helping them.
Shove them all in the garbage and just replace them with far healthier
cosmetic and personal care product choices.
Now, I realize that’s impractical. Money, first of all, we spent good money
on all these things. So what should you do? Where should you start?
One avenue that I suggest people think about is, “How close to my skin
is this product then?” If you have to pick and choose between a bottle of
shampoo and an anti-aging cream to replace first, choose the anti-aging
cream. Why? Because day after day, you are putting this directly on
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your skin so it can penetrate if it has these toxins. That’s the first thing
you want to limit versus the shampoo, which at least you’re putting on
quickly. Some may be getting into your skull, but it’s quickly rinsed off
too, in the shower. So again, think about it in those terms.
A deodorant, big change. You’re putting that under your arms, in this
very sensitive skin spot where it’s hidden there all day long. So it’s got
direct contact with your body all day, every day. Be super careful with
the deodorants that you choose, get rid of those that contain toxins.
That’s how I’d suggest folks think about it if they want to prioritize which
ones to get rid of first. Now, how in the world though do you make
good choices? How do you make good choices on what to use? What
to look for in the cosmetics and personal care products aisles of the
store, online and so on and so forth if there are thousands of potential
chemicals to watch out for.
What are you looking for? You can’t tell, look at some of these example
labels here. I think this is just from a hand sanitizers alone. And look
at those words and so many products. This probably looks familiar to
people, what you see on the screen here because that’s what so many
of these products look like. So what are you going to do? How do you
pinpoint? “That one’s okay, that one’s not.”
Here’s what you do. In the US, look for independent, this is a super
important word, independent certifications that the product is truly
clean, organic, toxin-free or that’s what you do. In other words, the most
predominant in the United States, independent certification is USDA
Certified Organic.
[40:00]
It’s this little green symbol, I think I show it on the screen here in a
moment. And you want to look for that in all of your skincare products,
period. And all of your cosmetics, all your personal care products, but
certainly those that you’re applying directly to your body; your creams,
your moisturizers, your serums, your deodorants, those sorts of things.
You certainly want to, and they’re out there, especially with deodorants,
you’ll go to common grocery stores today and you’ll find several, at least
variety of them in most places. But why this approach? Because again,
don’t take the company’s word for it. Again, we’re going to get into that.
Let me see if that’s on the next screen here indeed. This is the USDA
Certified Organic label I was talking about. But don’t buy into whatever
the company itself is promoting on its website or on the front of its
packaging.
Because again, they can say paraben-free. They can say organic. They
can say natural. They can say anything they want. They can’t say USDA
Certified Organic, or they’re going to get in trouble if they’re found out,
but they could just say organic. They could say wild crafted. That’s one
I’ve seen a lot, natural, all natural. These are not regulated phrases.
And as I mentioned to you, cosmetics and personal care products are
incredibly unregulated, period. Those are not widely regulated phrases.
And what it could mean is that yes, they have one ingredient that
is organic, amidst 50 ingredients that are not organic. And not only
that, that have well, maybe synthetic, but still they could put on the
front, organic. They could put paraben-free, even though it might
have formaldehyde and all these other ingredients that you saw
on the previous screen. Please be careful of this. You’re looking for
independent certifications. The top in this country, United States being
USDA Certified Organic.
What that means is it’s gone through independent scrutiny, independent
of the company where the ingredients themselves in the product are
95% or more toxin free. And even the ingredients allow that other 5%
are very specific, very meticulous, safe in other words. And it means
that even when it does contain as USDA Certified Organic products do,
natural ingredients often grown in the ground, plant-based ingredients
when it does. Even those ingredients at the level of farming, were
farmed without pesticides, without herbicides, in other words, it’s a
really strict process.
It takes a lot to be honest for a product to become, USDA Certified
Organic and still be highly effective as an anti-aging cream, a deodorant,
so on and so forth. It takes a lot. But it’s quite doable. Now, there are
equivalents. In some states there are some strict standards and so there
are independent certifications. You know what state you live in and
it’s worth checking. And if you live elsewhere in the world, and you’re
listening to this, you may know already your own country’s equivalent
of USDA Certified. For example, in a lot of Europe, it’s the ECOCERT,
which is based out of France. It’s called ECOCERT, very similar. It’s this
independent body that regulates this. So watch please carefully your
products for that.
Now, let’s revisit a few things here. Just never forget, please, that your
skin eats, your skin eats. I’m going to get to some really exceptional
ingredients to look for remembering that your skin eats. So you want
to feed your skin, therefore, your body healthy things the same way
you feed your body healthy things through your mouth. I’ve heard
this expression out there that that beautiful skin happens from the
inside out and from the outside in. In a way, but really the truth is that
everything happens from, like I started at the very start saying from the
outside in. From the outside in, and therefore from the inside out. In
other words, whether we’re have a orange here, we’re taking a bite of it
or we’re putting it here and then it goes in and then it blossoms out.
So really you are eating when you put things on your skin, just
remember that. And in some cases, the ingredients, the things that you
feed your body via your skin can be far more potent for your skin in
terms of healthy aging and great looking skin, anti-aging than the things
you put in your mouth, why? Because again, it’s the reactions happening
right there at your skin level. That’s why people do use creams and
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serums and so on and so forth.
It can be incredibly effective for getting rid, let’s be frank here, of the
appearance of wrinkles, of crow’s feet, of loose looking skin, sagging
looking skin, the appearance of age spots and so on and so forth. There
are a marvelous, healthy, natural ingredients that help these things in a
big way. So let’s jump into a few of those for you.
Before we do, though, I’m glad this screen popped up. Real brief lesson
for you. There’s these two key components. It’s more complicated
than this, but this is the key to remember. In skin, there’s two key
components that have to do with the appearance of skin and a lot more
functionality as well, but it’s elastin and collagen. Now, we’ve heard
a lot about collagen in recent years and justifiably so. You hear less
about elastin, but if I was going to make the case for either of these two
and focusing on them, I’d probably make the case for elastin a little bit
more than collagen to improve it in order to get the best looking skin of
your life. But the good news is you don’t have to pick one or the other,
because there are key ingredients that have an effect in both areas.
So let me use this example for you. Here’s a metaphor that’s helpful.
Think about traditional box spring mattress. It has all the stuffing and
it has those wire coils, the springs inside. All that stuff and it’s like the
collagen. And yes, when that stuff starts to go down, you will see some
wrinkles in your skin and so on and so forth. However, the elastin is
the springs themselves. And when those go, everything kind of goes.
Unfortunately, if you don’t do something about it as you age with elastin,
just like with collagen, perhaps more so, even with elastin as you age, it
can naturally well, degrade.
And then we exasperate it first and foremost, as I pointed out by feeding
our skin all these horrible things over the years, and then through all
the other bad lifestyle choices that are relatively very common today.
That people make the environmental toxins, bad diets in terms of eating
food through your mouth and so on and so forth. So many things can
exasperate what happens anyway, when you get older. But again, the
good news is there’s some marvelous, natural, healthy ingredients out
there that can help in a big way.
Number one, on the list. And many people have not heard of this one,
but organic maple leaf extract. Now, back in 2018, out of the University
of Rhode Island, this big study basically hit the airwaves so to speak.
And it was reported on all over the place, look it up. I think it was, if you
follow Mercola, something alternative like him. And then it was very
mainstream publications like Allure Magazine. Everybody put the focus
on this cool study, which showed that maple leaf extracts, particularly
red maple leaf extract has these phenolic compounds that that can
boost or help boost elastin in your skin.
And as I just noted, that’s the springs in the mattress. That’s super
important for your youngest looking skin. That’s what really can
powerfully get rid of wrinkles and the appearance of wrinkles on the
sagging, the skin appearance and all that good stuff. This is really a
powerhouse ingredient against the appearance of these signs of aging
that you don’t want. And if I was going to say, and good thing we never
have to say stuff like this, because it really is a mix of certain things that
matters. But if I had to say one single ingredient’s the most effective that
I’ve ever seen, it would be this.
But the good news is there’s still more, organic mango seed butter. Now
this is one that does indeed really help collagens. Here’s the thing about
collagen, a lot of people out there are taking collagen itself. And while
that may have some benefit, what you really want to do, whether it’s
foods you’re taking through your mouth or foods, you’re feeding your
skin is enable your body’s own production of collagen. And to do that
one very key ingredient is vitamin C. And organic mango seed butter is
one of the handful of ingredients out there that are sky high in vitamin
C. It’s exceptional, exceptional for young looking skin. So it’s another
outstanding ingredient.
Now, here’s one many of us have heard of, and it’s true. Organic aloe
Vera juice. It was called the plant of immortality back in ancient Egypt.
That’s how they refer to it. And science has said, “Indeed, that’s true.”
It has all kinds of benefits for your skin. We all know and think about
it probably when we get burns or cuts, but it does so much more than
that.
[50:00]
It really can have powerful anti-inflammatory effects. It moisturizes it’s
a great all around ingredient. Another that some have heard of some
have not is German chamomile, the scientific name chamomilla recutita.
It’s a really powerful antioxidant, anti-microbial, has powerful anti-
inflammatory effects. It’s really a strong skin soother. So if you have the
appearance of redness, dryness, really pay attention and see how you
respond to that ingredient.
Now, here’s a … this is not a new ingredient, has been around for eons,
but a lot of attention more and more being focused on how effective it
is for skin, because it’s a Turkey tail mushroom. You might’ve heard this
elsewhere in terms of consuming through your mouth. Well guess what?
Found out that consuming it in forms through your skin can have a real
powerful effect anti-aging effects.
Let’s move on here because my time is limited. Man, I could talk to
you all day about this stuff. But another one to really, really consider
is astaxanthin. Now, this comes from red algae. There is red algae and
then there’s creatures salmon, which is why many of them are pink.
Flamingos, which is why they are pink and other creatures consume
them. But when you’re looking for astraxanthan in a product, you do
want the plant-based form, the algae-based form. But it has superior
protective abilities that combats photo aging. It really helps in a big way
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with the appearance of weathered skin. Skin that looks like it’s been beat
down from the sun. If that’s you, look for a product with astraxanthin in
it to feed your skin
Indian gooseberry extract. You’ve heard, and you certainly will hear
more and more about amla or gooseberry extract. Turns out sky
high in vitamin C, great for your skin, super strong in the anti-wrinkle
department. And then a few other sunflower seed oil. Maybe you’ve
heard of that one and it truly is. It’s high in vitamin E and it’s exceptional
for hydrating your skin. Camu camu down the list there, take a
screenshot of this if you’re able to, because these are some outstanding
ingredients to look for in your skincare products.
So big picture. Let me try to extend this back out. At the start, I
mentioned to you that in the course of this discussion, you’d understand
why these steps that I defined here are the most effective, fastest, I will
assure you of that, that you can take if you really do want your most
beautiful youngest looking skin. Don’t feed your body as many … try to
reduce if not downright eliminate those toxins, those synthetic products
Feed it healthy, clean, certified organic products. Your skin will look
amazing from far more amazing quickly than it does today. I could just
state that outright. I’ve seen it too many times, maybe in a couple of
cases, I may be wrong, but I’ve seen it over and over. Just those steps
alone. And the better news is because of course, how we look matters
to us. But the better news is you will feel healthier. A lot of these other
symptoms we talk about at the start, don’t be surprised if they reduce or
go away. You will be doing your longevity a favor too.
So you can’t lose. And then of course I briefly covered some other areas,
hydrate, hydrate, hydrate, and all these other things. But anyway, I
just want to say thank you. I hope you gained a lot out of this and I am
wishing you decades and decades of youth. Take care.
ECZEMA, PSORIASIS & SKIN
DISEASE MASTERCLASS
Guest: Suzanne Rex Marlowe
Suzanne: This presentation is all about how CBD can help manage
eczema, psoriasis, and other autoimmune skin disorders. Before we get
started, I just want to take a second to introduce myself. Hello. My name
is Suzanne, and I am a health researcher here at Soma Leaf.
Soma Leaf is a partnership founded by two health enthusiasts who
are committed to formulating potent pure CBD products that actually
work and sharing them with others. We really just have one simple goal,
and that is to provide high-quality products that enable people to lead
healthier lives.
We truly want to help people be their best and empower them
physically, mentally, and spiritually, which is why I’m really excited to
share this information and research with you today specific to healing
your skin from the inside out by using CBD. Let’s get started.
So the key to having healthy glowing skin could actually start with
regular use of high-quality CBD. The reason CBD can be such an
effective solution for your skin issues is because of how it interacts with
something called your endocannabinoid system, or ECS for short. Your
endocannabinoid system is pretty amazing. It’s your body’s master
regulator and a huge key for your survival.
Your ECS is a unique communication system in your body that’s made
up of a network of receptors, and these receptors are located all
throughout your brain and body. And many are found on your immune
cells as well as the dermis and epidermis of your skin.
Now, no matter where they are, these receptors, when activated, work
together to maintain homeostasis, which is perfect balance and stability
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within your body. When the receptors on your skin are activated, then
your ECS starts to balance many of your skin’s key functions, such as
oil production, proper/even pigmentation, and much more. When the
receptors on your immune cells are activated, then your ECS begins to
reduce inflammation and stop an errant immune response.
Now, the ‘Goldilocks Zone,’ when all of the conditions in your skin and
immune system are just right, not too dry, not too oily, not over or
under reactive, et cetera. That only happens when the ECS receptors are
activated by a very specific type of molecule. Cannabinoids, simply put,
cannabinoids regulate how cells communicate, how they send, receive,
or process messages.
There are two types of cannabinoids, endogenous and exogenous.
Endogenous are produced inside of your body, but the kind we’re
going over today in this presentation are exogenous, which are actually
produced inside of plants. They’re also called phytocannabinoids.
Now, there’s one specific plant-derived phytocannabinoid that is the
absolute best at binding to ECS receptors and signaling them to do their
job, which is to bring back balance, reduce the stress response, and
produce majorly positive changes in your skin. And that is cannabidiol or
CBD for short.
Now, CBD is derived from either cannabis or hemp, which is cannabis’s
cousin. The CBD, for instance, in Soma Leaf comes from hemp because,
unlike marijuana, it contains close to zero THC, the psychoactive
component of marijuana that can get you high. And if your product of
choice has over 0.3% THC is actually considered marijuana and can’t be
sold as hemp.
So while you won’t get stoned high or intoxicated from taking hemp,
your body chemistry and skin will change in positive ways when you use
CBD. How exactly will it change? Well, there are six major ways that CBD
can positively impact your ECS and your skin.
Number one, CBD has a potential to slow your skin’s aging by one,
preventing and reducing free radical damage to the epidermis, and two,
balancing oxidative stress so it can diminish issues like scars, wrinkles,
dullness, age spots, or skin discoloration.
A peer-reviewed study published on Dove Press shows that affecting
the endocannabinoid system with CBD can help the skin look more
radiant and youthful. This research also suggests that CBD could slow
down the visible signs of aging. And in case you’re interested, all of these
references are on the very last slide of this presentation—if you want to
dig through the studies and see for yourself the research.
Number two, CBD has the potential to boost the integrity of your
skin membrane. And this is amazing because it makes your skin less
vulnerable to damage and better able to perform all of its functions like
thermal regulation, vitamin D synthesis, sensation, protection, body
image, water retention, and electrolyte balance.
A study published in Redox Biology shows CBD was found to protect
keratinocytes by preventing changes in the composition of the cellular
membrane. And the main purpose of these keratin-producing cells is
to preserve against microbial, viral, fungal, and parasitic invasion, and
to protect against UV radiation, and to minimize heat, solute, and water
loss.
CBD can also reduce inflammation, and studies show that it can calm
your skin. So one study done in 2015 shows that CBD appears to affect
a class of molecules important to inflammation process called cytokines.
And CBD tends to reduce the effects of those pro-inflammatory
cytokines. Therefore, reducing inflammation in your skin.
Four, research also suggests that CBD can help reduce swelling,
pain, and redness from the existing breakouts or irritation from skin
conditions like eczema and psoriasis. An in vitro study of human skin
cells found that CBD can inhibit the proliferation of keratinocyte cells,
depending on the concentration of the cannabinoids used.
And those keratinocyte cells are responsible for the painful inflammation
and scaly buildup of skin cells experienced by psoriasis sufferers. People
also report that CBD oil eases their pain and inflammation. So we have
both scientific research and plenty of anecdotal evidence showing how
powerful CBD can be for your skin, especially when it comes to psoriasis
and eczema.
And fifth, various studies also show that CBD has the ability to
help prevent dry, itchy, cracked skin by balancing the production
and flow of sebum. Our research study published in the Journal of
Clinical Investigation concludes that CBD supports healthy sebocytes,
and sebocytes are specialized cells that produce lipids that work to
moisturize the skin.
So, in turn, your skin is restored to the natural balance of its oil
production. This makes CBD a potentially powerful remedy to minimize
inflammation and protect the skin from eczema. In addition, due to the
combined lipostatic, anti-proliferative, and anti-inflammatory effects,
CBD has a potential as a promising therapeutic agent for the treatment
of acne vulgaris by reducing excess oil production.
And lastly, research also suggests that CBD can improve the production
of collagen, making your skin and muscles firmer and connective tissues
and bones stronger. Now that we know all of the great benefits of
CBD, you might be wondering about the safety. Let’s dig in a little bit to
immunomodulators versus immunosuppressants.
An important thing to note is that CBD is an immunomodulator and not
an immunosuppressant. It engages your immune system rather than
turning it off. And immunomodulators are known to pose a lower risk of
complications related to immune dysfunction. And CBD specifically has
no documented major health risks and no documented deaths.
According to Sarah Russo, an herbal medicine educator, CBD is
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completely different from traditional therapies, which act to suppress
the immune system completely or turn it off. Our immune system
exists for a reason. And there’s still so much that we don’t know about
autoimmune illnesses.
So holistic treatments like a clean diet in conjunction with cannabinoid
therapies represent a superior option. Bottom line: CBD is highly
effective at activating your endocannabinoid system and bringing your
skin and immune system into homeostasis or perfect balance. Without
CBD, your skin could very likely have a hard time functioning and looking
its best.
So it’s really quite simple. To help you create healthy, happy dewy-
looking skin that’s soft and smooth with reduced inflammation, try
amazing CBD. There’s actually a few more benefits of CBD too. In
addition to supporting a well-functioning endocannabinoid system and
healthy, youthful-looking skin, it’s fast-acting. If you’re taking a tincture,
some users report noticeable differences in a matter of seconds. It’s
non-addictive.
You can take non-psychoactive CBD as often as your body needs it, and
you won’t become addictive. And it’s cost-effective. You can get a one-
month supply of CBD at a price that really won’t break the bank. And it is
free of nasty side effects. In rare cases, taking incredibly high amounts of
CBD may cause nausea, diarrhea, fatigue, or irritability.
And when I say incredibly high amounts, studies show that these
symptoms usually come on if you’re taking around 500 to 1000
milligrams of CBD and a standard dose is 15 to 25 milligrams.
[10:00]
So if you stick at your recommended dose, there really aren’t too many
documented side effects. And even if so, the potential drawbacks are
generally milder than the effects from traditional medicines. And of
course, if you are currently on a medicine, please do not change your
protocol without consulting with your physician.
All right. If you’re ready to help heal your skin with CBD, you might be
wondering how to go about using it. And there’s actually a few ways you
can easily add CBD to your daily routine. So as I mentioned, CBD comes
in oral tinctures. You can also take it topically. Oral CBD comes in three
forms: pills and capsules, tinctures, and edibles.
If you’re new to CBD, tinctures are a great place to start because you can
easily adjust your dosage. And unlike pills or edibles, you don’t have to
wait long for the effects of the CBD to kick in. A tincture can work within
a matter of seconds, usually minutes, versus if you’re taking a pill or a
capsule or an edible, it will take up to an hour to start working. Most
sources recommend starting with 15 to 25 milligrams at a time.
Soma Leaf, for instance, has 17 milligrams per recommended dose. And
then, if you need to, you can increase by 15 to 25 milligrams at a time if
needed. Everyone’s endocannabinoid system is a little bit different, so
you’re just going to have to try out and see what works best for you.
If you take a tincture, just hold it under your tongue for up to a minute.
And one little thing to note is if this is your first time trying CBD, you
might feel a bit woozy for three to five minutes or a little bit-- you’ll
notice a large sense of calmness coming over you. That sensation should
go away quickly and shouldn’t happen again with subsequent doses.
All right. If you want some simple recipe ideas, I have a few for you. I do
want to say that since CBD is usually mild in flavor, you can enjoy taking
just a tincture on its own. Soma Leaf has orange oil in it, so it actually
tastes like a sweet and tangy bite of citrus. But every product is going to
be a little bit different.
You can take it on its own or mix it into your favorite smoothie, breakfast
bowl, or salad. Here’s a few recipe ideas for you. The first one is a
smoothie anti-Inflammatory tropical turmeric smoothie.
You’re going to just toss a frozen banana, some frozen mango chunks,
pineapple, blueberries, some unsweetened coconut milk, some fresh
ginger, a pinch of pepper, and some cinnamon. Put it all in the blender
and then enjoy, and then add your CBD. You can either put it in the
blender. Or what I like to do is blend my smoothie. Then put the CBD on
top and mix it in.
Second smoothie is one of my favorites, and my young son actually
loves this one too—blood orange and cacao chia pudding. You’re going
to take a ripe banana and mash it up until it’s creamy, and then mix in
your chia seeds and get rid of any lumps. Then you’re going to add the
liquid, coconut milk, some blend orange juice. A regular Oj is fine. Some
raw cacao if you’d like, a pinch of salt, and then some honey or syrup.
You might need to use a beater to mix it all up. Then you’re going to
cover and chill in the fridge for a while so those chia seeds can soak
up all that liquid. When you’re ready to eat, just serve your chia seed
pudding into a bowl. Add your oranges. You can drizzle a little bit of
honey, add some pistachios, and then your eight pumps of either Soma
Leaf CBD turmeric or any CBD of your choice.
And last recipe I have for you is just a simple enzyme and antioxidant-
rich fruit salad. Just wash and cut up the fruit of your choice. We like
papaya, pineapple, bananas, apples, and blueberries. Then in a small
bowl, mix up some raw honey, some fresh lime, zest, and lime juice and
combine it with the fruit. Top it with your CBD oil and enjoy.
All right. The second type of CBD is topical CBD. CBD is usually good for
all skin types, and the value of topical applications, which come in oils,
serums, lotions, salts, and salves, is that they work quickly and target
one area. CBD anti-aging creams also visibly diminish issues like skin
dullness and ruddy skin tone.
They also have been found to calm skin, help minimize issues related to
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skin sensitivity, including redness and reactivity, and reduce the look of
inflammation—basically, everything we discussed earlier about the six
main benefits of CBD for skin health.
Now, there are many beauty products that include CBD for optimal skin
health, but that doesn’t mean they all give you optimal results. Be sure
to read the label and check out the other ingredients in your product.
A significant dose of CBD is not going to really do much if you’re also
spreading toxins on your skin.
And keep in mind that much of the CBD experience is highly personal.
So a little trial and error may be in order. But before you run out and
stock up on a cabinet full of CBD products, you have to know how to
spot good CBD from bad CBD because, honestly, there’s a lot of junk on
the market.
So warning to you, buyer beware. CBD must meet these four standards,
or it’s just not going to work or be something you want to take. So first
things first, you have to find CBD that is from a reputable source that
uses superior growing methods. And that’s because hemp is responsible
for a process called phytoremediation, which means it will soak up
whatever’s in the soil that it’s planted in.
Hemp is so good at phytoremediation that it’s even planted at the
Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster site to help pull radioactive waste out of the
soil. In other words, hemp grown for CBD must be grown organically
with clean, mineral-rich pesticide-free soil, or else you’ll be ingesting a lot
of toxins and contaminants that can harm your health.
Not only is soil quality critically important, so is the planting zone, the
crop space, and the watering schedule to avoid common mold growth
and harvest time. So it’s true successfully growing healthy hemp plants
with high levels of CBD isn’t easy. That’s why you really want to find a
brand that has invested thousands and thousands of dollars to get it
right, producing the purest form of CBD possible.
You’ll want to find a product that uses only organic non-GMO hemp that
is grown with great care by farmers who know what they’re doing, who
have spent many years cultivating specific strains of CBD-rich hemp. And
seek out those brands that source healthy whole pesticide-free crops.
And then, they wait until the plants reach full maturity and potency
before they begin extraction.
Your CBD brand of choice should be proven to be pure and have high
potency. So CBD can be extracted from hemp plants in several ways,
but I recommend sourcing CBD that uses only the safest, most efficient,
most advanced method in the industry. And that’s called CO2 extraction.
That process allows producers to pull out the purest and most potent
CB molecules that hemp can offer. It’s simply the best way to create
botanical extracts. And you can get that proof. Check to see if your CB of
choice is third-party tested for quality. It’s really the only way to be sure
you’re getting a pure and potent product.
And that brand should be sharing their third-party testing results with
you. You should have access to that. There’s no reason why they should
hide that from consumers. In fact, when you’re on Soma Leaf’s page, you
can see it directly there.
Okay. Number three, find a CBD product that promises truth in labeling
and extreme value. Okay. They need to promise 100% transparency on
their label because, let’s be honest. The CBD market has exploded in
recent years, and you can find CBD products just about anywhere, even
at gas stations and convenience stores.
And this is really because there’s no federal regulation. So you have to
really just get to know and trust your brand because quantity does not
equal quality. Many manufacturers who want to cash in on the CBD
craze actually bottle hemp oil and slap a CBD label on it. So if you’ve ever
tried CBD and it hasn’t worked, this could be why. There’s no CBD in it, to
begin with.
Simply put, hemp oil is not the same as CBD oil. Hemp oil is high
in omega-3. So it’d probably make a great for salad dressing, but it
contains pretty much zero CBD, which is that specific cannabinoid that
helps promote homeostasis and better skin. Your key takeaway here
is make sure the label actually says cannabidiol because that is that
phytocannabinoid responsible for activating your endocannabinoid
system.
And lastly, your CBD should be fast-acting and have guaranteed
absorption. So it’s not enough to simply produce high-quality, high-
potency CBD oil because a superior tincture or topical doesn’t mean
much when your body can’t use it. Because there’s a massive absorption
problem when it comes to CBD.
Enzymes in your mouth and stomach, digestive juices, bile salts,
digestive acids, and various flora in the intestines can break down
and degrade most CBD oils. So CBD doesn’t reach your cells or those
endocannabinoid receptors, and you often experience little to no
benefit, but there’s actually a solution.
And what you’re going to want to look for is something called liposomes,
which is a unique delivery system designed to protect and deliver
nutrients into the bloodstream.
[20:00]
It’s an advanced technology, and it works by encapsulating CBD
molecules into liquid liposomes so that they can be accepted into your
bloodstream and into your cells where they are needed. So shop for a
CBD that is delivered using liposomal technology, or else that CBD you
take won’t be very effective.
And by the way, in case you’re wondering, Soma Leaf meets all of those
four quality standards. If you’re interested, you can learn more just
by visiting Somaleaf.com. And if you like those recipes I shared with
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you today, you can actually download a free recipe book by visiting
Somaleaf.com/cbdforskin. And they’re going to have other recipes in
addition to those three that I showed you, and they all incorporate
liposomal CBD of your choice.
All you have to do is enter email address at Somaleaf.com/cbdforskin,
and you’ll get instant access to more delicious and nourishing recipes
that incorporate liposomal CBD.
And to recap, number one, your endocannabinoid system, or ECS
for short, is a master regulator of homeostasis. And when activated,
is essential at promoting balanced, healthy skin. CBD is a specific
phytocannabinoid known for effectively activating your ECS and hoping
to reduce free radical damage, support anti-aging mechanisms, regulate
sebum or oil production, and calm inflamed skin.
You must buy high-quality CBD that is organically grown and carefully
extracted, or you can be doing more harm to your skin than good by
ingesting dangerous toxins. Your CBD should also be delivered using
liposomal technology, or it just won’t work.
High-quality CBD from a reputable source can be an incredible, safe,
and cost-effective way to have healthy, youthful-looking skin. And lastly,
make sure to download your free recipe book that includes delicious
and nourishing liposomal CBD recipes by visiting Somaleaf.com/
cbdforskin. Cheers to having perfectly balanced, healthy skin.
And if you want, here are those references that I promised you. Thank
you so much for listening. And I hope this was helpful.
LIGHT THERAPIES AND SKIN
DETOXIFICATION
Ryan: Welcome to lesson five of the Eczema, Psoriasis and Skin Disease
Masterclass. Light Therapies and Skin Detoxification. This is getting into
some more advanced areas so before we get in, really feel the need to
emphasize that if you just jump into all super interesting and exotic stuff
like light therapy, but skip all the stuff we talked about leading up to it,
the root causes, the triggers, bacterial and inflammation component and
controlling the symptoms. No matter how cool any of the light therapy
and skin detox stuff we talk about here sounds, I don’t think you’d ever
get to a complete healing.
Teddy: That said, we have known about the healing power of light
for quite a long time from our journey through cancer, so it wasn’t a
surprise at all to find out it can play a massive role in eczema as well.
And on the skin detoxification component, we’ve known about the
importance of detoxification since early on in our research. Your body
can’t do the healing it’s supposed to do when it’s got things in there that
shouldn’t be there that it’s trying to figure out what to do with.
We’d always thought about that as an internal thing, but when going
through eczema, it made sense that again, since the skin is actually the
body’s largest organ, it would heal better when cleaned out of anything
impeding it as well.
Ryan: When it comes to light, we’ve actually really been into this concept
lately for cancer and healing in general. So we were thrilled to find so
much out there on it for eczema as well. A lot of people talk about this
in terms of energy. When you break any molecule down far enough, be
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it from a human body or a coffee table, all you really get is empty space
that’s not really empty in that it consists of energy. So thinking about
things in this way, it makes sense you want to charge up, so to speak, in
general.
Sunlight is of course the ultimate source of energy. We all know plants
grow through photosynthesis, directly using the sunlight. And so when
we eat them we’re essentially absorbing that stored sunlight energy.
We have photo receptors in our own bodies as well. And there’s more
coming out on individual cells emitting their own biophotonic light. You
can see with the right equipment and all that.
Teddy: So when you look at what they did in ancient times, it’s not
surprising to find that phototherapy, literally just laying out in the sun,
was a big part of what got prescribed for healing. Fast forward to today,
the sun is still the ultimate source of energy. You’ve just got to be careful
with it as we’ll talk about. And we’ve got all sorts of helpful devices that
compliment it as well. Speaking of helpful devices, what first got us
thinking about light in relation to eczema was when we were realizing
Rocky’s case was indeed a really big deal and not going away unless we
did something major.
And we’re calling around all over town to various clinics to see what we
could find to help locally, in addition to working with folks remotely.
And we talked to the owner of a clinic who offered various healing
modalities.
Ryan: Yeah, and he told us that he had recently seen a boy with a very
substantial case of eczema. And that he put this boy in front of his red
light therapy device every day for several weeks. Of course, they cleaned
up his diet and everything we’ve talked about, but they could tell that
the light therapy itself was having a huge impact from the improvement
they saw pretty much immediately after each session.
We’d already been wanting a red light therapy device for quite some
time, just hearing about all the healing benefits associated with it in
general. So when we heard about this, as you can imagine, we were on
the computer ordering one within minutes of that conversation.
Teddy: And when we got it, we indeed could see definitive changes just
from using it on top of everything else we were doing, and we got really
excited. We already had another light therapy device called a BIOPTRON.
We hadn’t really put that much thought into for this case until then, but
we absolutely should have as it’s known for its healing properties. So it
makes absolute sense it would help the skin to heal from what you could
basically consider a wound. So we started incorporating that and also
saw benefit.
And of course, all of this talk got us thinking about the ultimate light
therapy we’re talking about in the beginning, the sun itself. So we started
being really intentional about actually using it as well. So all that said,
we’re really excited to show you all about how we incorporate light
therapy when it comes to healing eczema.
Ryan: Alright. Fun stuff. Light therapy devices. Like we mentioned, light
therapy in general has some amazing effects. By no means should
be considered to be any sort of standalone treatment without doing
all the other stuff we’ve been talking about all the rest of these days
in modules and what have you. But that being said, some really cool
effects to be had that we have seen personally from both these devices.
So within any light therapy device, obviously you’re going to have some
overlap because it’s light at the end of the day. But then there are some
differences between the different devices out there.
This is by no means any representative of all of the light therapy devices
you could get. But these are the two that we’ve gravitated towards and
they do seem to be having some amazing benefits in their own way. So
we can start with the red light therapy device. This is the Mito Red Light.
It’s not one of the big brand names, but we’ve actually found it to have
better specs than the big brand names at a better price so there you go.
Get a feel for what it looks like turned on here.
Obviously very powerful. This is red light therapy. It’s not like a full
spectrum type thing. These are very high powered red and near infrared
emitting LEDs, light-emitting diodes. And what can I say except red light
therapy is all the rage these days. And for good reason. There’s a good
reason you’re hearing everyone talk about it. So it has all sorts of healing
benefits, but I think the main thing that it’s primarily recognized for,
what people are really finding to be of value is the fact that it increases
cellular energy or mitochondrial ATP.
Basically, the energy that your cells make to have your body do all the
different functions and just stay alive and be energetic and have it do all
the things that it does. That’s ATP. And red light therapy has been shown
in study after study to increase mitochondrial ATP. And so now they’re
looking at all of these different applications and saying, “Okay, what can
it help?” And not surprisingly, eczema and other skin conditions as well
has been shown to be a big winner.
I’m not sure if anyone knows the exact mechanism, but it would make
sense that if your skin is constantly being dried out, eaten from the
inside almost and you’re constantly needing to produce new, fresh,
healthy skin cells just to stay afloat. That if you have an increase in
cellular energy and being able to make new cells and have the cells you
do have be as vibrant as possible and everything, that’s going to be a
big win. And that said, they’re studying red light therapy for all sorts of
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different conditions and finding great results. There are indeed good
eczema studies on red light showing lots of good things.
I think both of these have also been shown to reduce inflammation
across the board. And I guess the other one you’re talking about
comparing the two. And we’ll talk about this BIOPTRON in a second. The
nice thing about the red light therapy is you can get it in a much more
full body type application. Whereas they do make a huge one of this, but
that’s super expensive and then only like healthcare practitioners have
that. So it’s not exactly cost efficient to have at home.
Whereas if you are going through more of a full-body eczema situation,
you can cover yourself in red light pretty easily with one of these bad
boys. This has been huge. And again, we got this after talking to a local
practitioner and having him tell us about just the amazing success he
saw with the little boy with eczema and this was the primary change that
they made and saw the amazing results. It’s readily apparent that when
we put Rocky under this thing, things get better.
[10:00]
Especially earlier on. He’s in a much better place now, but when he had
breakouts all over his body it was quite evident that just some time
under this, it was a before and after type of thing, so it was pretty neat.
This is the BIOPTRON. We have had this guy for quite some time. Much
longer than the red light therapy which we got for eczema specifically.
This technology has actually been around for a long time. You got to see
the difference in the light here. It’s a much more non-aggressive light, I
guess you could say. It’s not quite as intense as the BIOPTRON.
Like I said, this has been around for quite some time. I think at least a
couple of decades. And this technology is really big in Europe. I’m not
sure why it hasn’t transferred to the States, but it is all over the place in
Europe. Very well studied for a host of conditions, dermatologic being
a big one of them actually. This company has a whole section on their
website just dedicated to the dermatologic applications that you can see
from this. So it’s a different light philosophy, I guess you could say.
Whereas the red light therapy that is just looking at the red light
spectrum. You got red and near infrared. BIOPTRON is a full spectrum
light source. So whereas this is an LED with just the red light frequency,
this is actually just based off like a special halogen bulb, but a full
spectrum light source is what I’m trying to get out there. And then it
goes through all sorts of different lenses and mirrors and special things
to have the output of light be in just such a way that really can penetrate
and have the maximum healing potential.
A bunch of fancy words like hyperpolarized and incoherent and things
that the average layman doesn’t really know a whole lot about, but
pretty impressive reading on their site, I’ll tell you that. And it does result
in a lot of neat things. Again, there’s going to be some crossover with
benefits of light therapy, but they both reduce inflammation. I think
what this is most known for aside from just getting the optimal healing
energy. This is actually known for wound healing. It’s really well studied
for wound healing.
So it gives you an idea if it’s going to be good for wound healing, it’s
going to be good for skin healing in general, but this actually targets
bacteria as well. So you can actually call this more of an antibacterial
measure, boost collagen production, boost fibroblast. A bunch of things
that as well are going to be really good for skin healing. Just as far as
where to start, I would say I do really like this device. We got it for Ryder
a long time ago because I was so sold on it.
This is actually quite a bit more expensive than this. You get the whole-
body benefits. So if you are going to start somewhere, I’d probably start
on the red light. Maybe work your way up to the BIOPTRON if you still
need it or just want it for general healing. We’ve got quite the collection
of energy medicine devices because we know the power of light energy
just for general healing etcetera. One thing I’ll say just about light
therapy in general, when you look into light therapy for eczema, it used
to be treated with UV.
They had special UV lights. I think just mimicking the sun. And we’ll
talk about the sun in a second, but they had special UV lights. That’s
the primary thing that if a doctor was going to say, “Hey, maybe you
should think about some light therapy,” it would be UV light therapy. The
problem is that yes, UV is produced by the sun so it is a natural thing. I
don’t think we should necessarily be as scared of it as we’re told under
the right circumstances, but at the end of the day, it is something you
can overdose on, so to speak. And just especially the concentrated UV. I
don’t know it’s such a good idea.
These guys are much safer to use on a consistent basis, longer term
basis without any potential risks. You can call the targeted UV therapy
old school thinking, more of a full spectrum or red light therapy. The
next generation, I guess you could say. But when you’re talking about
old school, we can’t forget to take it all the way back to the sun like we
talked about just a moment ago. Again, the sun is our ultimate light
source or ultimate source of energy on this planet. It’s why we’re all
alive, it’s the sun. For many different reasons.
We talk about these fancy devices, but just making sure to get outside
every day and take it easy at first. Just do it for a couple minutes with
your shirt off. People are told to avoid midday sun, but for therapeutic
purposes, I’d say that’s actually the best time to make sure you’re getting
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the most powerful blast. And then it’s more of a time efficient thing.
Don’t stay out there. It’s not like you’re going to the pool and staying out
there for hours, but as far as just walking out for a few minutes, seeing
how that does. Go out for maybe one or two minutes longer the next
day.
Just building up from there, that sort of thing. That is the best way to
make sure you’re getting the most therapeutic effects from the sun at
its full time. Alright. I think I’ve talked enough about light therapy for
now, but I hope you guys got something out of this and it is a really neat
addition to stack on top of everything else we’ve been talking about.
And how could we be talking about light therapy without mentioning
our infrared sauna, perhaps our favorite light therapy device although
a little different, of course, than just a pure light source, as now we’re
talking about heat and infrared rays and all that good stuff. Could not,
not mention the infrared sauna. I was going back and forth on whether
to strip down to my skivvies. I’m usually in this thing, but decided you
guys don’t need to see that. If you already have an infrared sauna and
are going through something like eczema, I would highly encourage you
to use it.
It’s a problem sometimes folks get a sauna and then fall off their sauna
routine. You don’t already have one, would be a very worthwhile thing to
consider. There are just so many benefits. It’s really hard to elucidate all
the benefits of an infrared sauna. It was the first thing we got when our
son Ryder was diagnosed with cancer. Because there were just so many
benefits. It was just a huge bang for your buck. It not only does this, it
does this, this, this, and this. And so all of those things were applicable
to cancer. So it was just a no brainer.
Fast forward, we’re going through eczema. And again, so many of the
things that were good for someone going through cancer are good
for someone going through eczema or any skin condition really. We’re
here talking about skin health, skin detoxification, detoxification in
general, and I’m sure toxicity, whether it be the primary root cause or a
contributing cause. Probably a cause of just about everybody’s eczema.
When you think about sweat, there’s really nothing I can think of that is
going to help you detoxify from the inside out.
And especially when you’re talking about the skin itself better than the
river of sweat you get when you crank the heat on this thing up. And
again, another big component of this is the anti-inflammatory. We talked
about anti-inflammatory with the BIOPTRON, with the red light. But
with the sauna in particular, you are literally getting heated up from the
inside out and those rays are penetrating really deep. It’s a best of both
worlds in that you’re controlling inflammation inside, you’re controlling
inflammation on the skin.
Another big one is the immune benefit. You’re almost tricking your body
into thinking that there’s a fever, because you are getting heated from
the inside out. So your body thinks there’s this fever and the immune
system needs to catch up and do whatever it needs to do. It’s almost like
a wakeup call for the rest of your immune system to be on guard and
be looking out for whatever’s triggering this fever. That is clearly very
beneficial in cancer because you want your immune system at the top of
its game.
But again, when we’re talking about something like eczema with a
potential auto-immune component, regulation of the immune system,
anything you can do to get your immune system back online and just
functioning as it should, that’s going to be a really big win. And then
speaking of the immune system, it’s related. I’m sure we’ve all heard of
the parasympathetic nervous system versus the sympathetic nervous
system. Parasympathetic being rest and digest, rest and relax, that sort
of thing. Sympathetic being fight or flight, there’s a tiger chasing you or
something like that or just your email box keeps dinging. That can send
you into sympathetic as well.
There is no way that you can spend 20, 30, 40 minutes in this thing and
not be in parasympathetic mode by the time you get out of it. It’s just
one of the most relaxing things you can imagine.
[20:00]
And again, anything you can do to calm your body, it’s going to be
calming to your whole body. That’s a pretty big deal when you’re talking
about something like eczema and also something like healing in general.
You want to be in rest and repair mode, not fight or flight.
There’s just so many reasons we love the sauna. If you do have one,
get in there and if you don’t, highly consider getting one, we just love
it so much. This is the Influence. We’ve found it to be the best specs
and pretty much the best price. So can’t beat it there. Same with the
Mito Red Light actually. So that’s always nice when that happens. Our
routine, a couple things to mention there. One, we try to do as much as
we can to get the lymphatic system moving before we get into the sauna
themselves. So for us, that means primarily, a couple of things we do.
First is rebounding, jumping on a little mini trampoline. That’s just
a classic lymphatic stimulation thing. We’re going to be sweating
everything out. The sauna itself gets the lymphatic system moving, but if
you get the lymphatic system moving, even before you get in the sauna,
then you’re just going to up your detox level that much more. So we do
that. We also do dry skin brushing for Ryder, for the kids, for ourselves.
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That’s something you might want to take it easy on if you’ve got a real
bad lesion, dry skin brushing can be a little rough. Might not be the
best idea. But if you don’t already have a dry skin brush, pick one up
especially for your areas that aren’t so bad. Great way to clear dead skin
cells, and then obviously make room for new ones. Keep the pathways
open, all that good stuff. And again, it’s another huge stimulator when it
comes to the lymphatic system.
So beforehand also, really big deal to drink a bunch of water. You don’t
want to be drinking a bunch of water while you’re inside, because you
want your core body temperature to be raising, but drinking a bunch
of water beforehand, really good idea to make sure you stay hydrated
because you are going to be sweating a lot. And then once you’re inside,
we like to do a lot of things. Deep breathing exercises, meditation, that
sort of thing. Just anything you can do to relax. Have this time be your
time to relax, play some relaxing music etcetera.
And then afterwards we found it’s a really good time to apply if you’re
doing essential oils, if you’re doing any of the lotions, or I should just say
topical products that we’ve talked about. Really good time to do that as
now your pores are wide open and ready to just accept anything that
they get. So that’s a really good time. Anything you really want to make
sure it gets into your skin in a big way, right after you get out of the
sauna is one of the best places to do it.
Make sure to towel off before you put any kind of lotion on because you
want to make sure none of that sweat gets reabsorbed. Not that a whole
lot would, but just towel off all the sweat you can, make sure none of
that gets reabsorbed. Do whatever topical product happens to be next
in your rotation. And then shower if you want from there. And then it
might probably be a good idea to do a topical product again right after
the shower because like we talked about, that’s also a really good time
to do a topical product.
You don’t have to take a shower right after the sauna, but it does feel
nice. And it’s just another way to make sure you’re obviously cleaning off
all your sweat, that sort of thing. But if you just towel off that’s the big
thing. I think that does it for everything I wanted to tell you about the
sauna. Again, we love it. It’s one of the best all-around healing things you
can have in your house. And we were just delighted when we started
thinking about it in terms of, this is something we already have that can
really help with eczema as well.
Again, it makes sense that all these light therapies would have such a
profound impact on the skin as it’s what was designed to take in light
energy in the first place. So we’re really happy we stumbled into it and
have been able to incorporate all of this in such a big way. One thing we
definitely need to mention on it though, just like with supplements or
healthy eating or really anything that’s good for you, just doing it here
and there isn’t going to have much of an impact.
This is really something that needs to be done regularly to get the
benefit from it. So we’ve brought it up already, but again, schedule,
schedule, schedule. It’s the only way we’re able to keep all this stuff
straight in our minds.
Teddy: Either have a specific time of day your light therapy stuff
happens or tie it to certain events. If you have lunch around noon,
easy to remember to just eat it outside with your shirt off or go out
right afterwards, or whatever makes the most sense. Maybe you put
whatever light therapy device you get on either your morning or evening
routine so you can be sure it happens every day. Again, just make
sure you have some system in place for ensuring these things actually
happen every day.
And when we talk about skin detoxification, one of our go-tos for
detoxification in general has been clay for a long time. Bentonite clay to
be specific for us, but there are a few good kinds. It has such amazing
properties for pulling out and soaking up toxins and toxicants. The
minerals in it act like a magnet for drawing all of this stuff out. It really is
a gift from the earth.
Ryan: And we’ve used clay baths and clay packs for healing in general,
for drawing toxicants out of the body. It does wonders for bee stings. On
that note, Ryder just got stung by a wasp last night, in fact and was fine
within a minute of putting some clay on. So it was an easy conclusion
to come to that, if it can do such an amazing job, pulling things out of
the body and up through the skin, then it’s got to be doing something to
cleanse the skin itself as well.
And when we started thinking about it, we realized that clay is used in all
sorts of natural beauty products anyway. One of the easiest things you
can do for an instant beauty boost is a clay mask because it does indeed
do such a great job of purifying the skin.
Teddy: So knowing how great it is for pulling toxins out of the body,
combined with the fact that people have been using it for skin health
for a very long time anyways. Again, it wasn’t a real big shocker to find
out it helps so much with eczema specifically as well. And on that note,
while we’re talking about it in this section on skin detoxification because
it is so amazing for this purpose, but when we’re talking about eczema
specifically, bentonite clay is also anti-inflammatory and anti-pathogenic.
So when you use it, you can count it towards those purposes as well. Not
to mention just being very soothing to the skin overall. With that said,
we’ll now show you how we go about using bentonite clay, both in a
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bath and in a pack.
Ryan: Clay bath and clay pack. So again, bentonite clay is the particular
kind that we tend to gravitate to. It’s amazing for pulling toxicants out of
things and absorbing it into the clay. That being said, you want to make
sure that the clay you get is from a good clean source because it is so
effective at absorbing toxicants that if somebody mined it out of a dirty
area, something like that, then it’s already going to be dirty. So whatever
brand you go with, make sure they talk about the testing they do of their
actual product. We like Redmond Clay.
So we can start with the clay bath. Again, like we’ve talked about with
all the other baths. There’s no real agreement or exact science on how
much to do. You see anywhere from a half a cup in a bathtub to three or
four cups in a bathtub. I think just whatever works for you. Obviously, if
you do four cups of clay, this is a big bucket, but you’ll probably run out
of that pretty quick as well. Budget probably comes into consideration,
but again, just whatever feels right for you.
Back to the start small, work your way up philosophy, see what feels
good, that sort of thing. With clay baths, it’s very warm water, but not
overly hot because you’re trying to open up the pores and get as much
out as you can get out. So that being said, it’s pretty simple. It’s clay in
a bathtub with some water. Not rocket science, just like with the other
baths we talked about. I think the big thing with clay baths is to mix it up
if at all possible before you actually dump the clay into the bath.
[30:00]
However, much clay you want to use, take that and either put it in a
blender full of water and blend that up. Or you can even just get a big
Mason jar, fill most of it up with water and then put your clay in the rest
of it. Shake that up really well until you shake out most of the chunks
because bentonite clay can chunk up pretty well once you get it gets
exposed to water.
And if you just throw it in the tub then you’re just going to have a lot of
chunks. And you can sit there and individually rub out each chunk in the
bathtub if that’s what you do, but it’s way easier to just mix it up either
in a blender or just in a big glass jar and shake it beforehand because
then you’re not going to have to deal with that. Again, with baths, stay
in there at least 20 minutes to let it do its thing. 30 to 40 is ideal, but it’s
just time permitting. If we didn’t mention that for the other baths that’s a
good rule of thumb. At least 20 minutes, 30 to 40 even better.
And again, when you’re getting out of the bath, same thing. Don’t dry
yourself all the way off. Just pat down with the towel. And then this is the
perfect time to put on whatever lotion, topical products, moisturizing, all
the different things we’ve discussed. This is a great time for it. So that’s
a bath. And if you’re dealing with just more of a problem area, whatever
the case may be. We’re talking about skin detoxification here.
And I should mention, I think we touched on it in the last bath video,
the Epsom salt, sea salt, and baking soda. That’s a very calming bath
due to the magnesium, but it also, I mentioned, it is a detoxifying bath
as well. So you could count that in with skin detoxification as well. But if
you have more of just a problem area that you want to work on. That’s
where a clay pack comes in. So you saw this cloth for the wet wraps. We
also use it for clay packs. It’s just organic gauze, organic muslin, a lot of
different kinds of cloths will do the job here.
It’s cutting out, not a huge patch. If it’s on your arm just a little bigger
than whatever area you’re going to want treated on your arm. And with
a clay pack, it’s not just completely dissolving clay in water like we were
talking about with the bath. It’s more about making just more of a paste.
Like what you would picture just wet clay as being, more of a thick paste.
You pour some in a jar just depending on what size of area you’re trying
to cover, but you get a feel for the right of amount. Pour that in a jar and
just add a little bit of water.
Just barely get it wet, mix it up and see is there still dry chunks? If yes,
add a little more. Just a clay paste. You’ll get it when you’re doing it. You’ll
know it’s right. And then from there just spread it. You can either spread
it directly on your arm or you can spread it onto the cloth I don’t think it
really matters what you do first and it doesn’t have to be your arm. Just
wherever you’re doing it. But either way you have your problem are,
you’ve got the clay on top on that and then you’ve got the cloth on top of
that. And it’s usually a good idea just to make sure it stays on there.
Get some medical tape or something like that just to make sure that the
cloth and the pack and everything actually stays on. Tape it and you are
good to go. And really, the amount of time you want it on there is the
amount of time it takes for the clay to totally dry. Because in that drying
process, it’s where it’s drawing everything out of the skin. So depending
on how thick the paste is, how big of an area you did, all that stuff, that
could be one hour, that could be three or four hours.
Just depends, but there’s your range there. It’s even something you
could do overnight if you’re dealing with a large area and you don’t want
to be walking around with it and dealing with it during the day. You
could do it as an overnight thing and that would be just fine as well. That
about does it for the clay packs. Again, skin detoxification, I can’t think of
really anything better than a clay bath or a clay pack.
And there you have it. If you’ve been going through all the stuff
we’ve talked about leading up to this, removing root causes and
environmental triggers. Addressing the infection and inflammation,
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keeping the symptoms managed. And now you add in light therapy
and skin detoxification, I think you’re really going to like what happens.
That does it for our go-tos on light therapy and skin detoxification. As
always, definitely check out the Zielinskis today as skin detoxification
in particular is right up their alley. They also incorporate a lot of light in
what they do as well.
Teddy: And we’ll see you back here for the sixth lesson, Food Triggers
and Supplements.
LIGHT THERAPIES AND SKIN
DEETOXIFICATION
Dr. Zielinski: Hello, and welcome to Lesson Five: Light Therapies and
Skin Detoxification. In this lesson, you’re going to learn about effective
detox strategies that are safe for everyone, the importance of emotional
detoxification, and we’ll wrap up with a wonderful DIY segment with
Mama Z to show how to make our essential oil detox water and how to
put together the perfect skin-soothing detox bath. Ready to get started?
Me too.
Effective Detox Strategies Safe for Everyone
First off, if you’d like to learn about specific light therapies, I’ll refer you
to the other presentations in this lesson. We are huge proponents of
red light and infrared sauna therapies and are blessed to have both
in our home so we can enjoy on-demand skin healing and cellular
detoxification benefits.
In this video, however, we focus on detoxification because it’s something

near and dear to our hearts. Now, I want to refer you to Lesson Four to
talk about proper hydration, because that really is the primary means to
detox your skin.
And with that said, we need to think about detoxification as a whole,

because what’s the point about going through potentially expensive or
time consuming detoxification strategies when you don’t stop the insult?
Essentially, you have to stop the bleeding before you put on the band-
aid. That’s why it’s extremely important to review the previous lessons
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and to get out Mama Z’s do-it-yourself body care and cleaning recipe
guides so you can stop that insult on your skin, because the dehydrating
chemicals and the potential carcinogens that are in cleaners and body
care products need to stop, let alone what’s in your air.
I highly recommend getting an air purification system. Ultimately, the

concept of detoxification is this: we need to give the body time to heal,
and it literally is impossible for the body to heal and for your immune
system to function properly and then lead it to good skin health if there’s
a constant insult, which includes bacterial infection, viral infection,
fungal infection, and just constant onslaught of chemicals with what we
eat, with what we breathe, and with what we put on our skin.
So I can’t stress this enough, is that if you want to detox, the first thing
to do is start to change your lifestyle. Stop the toxins that are being
exposed in the air, on your skin, in your body, and now your metabolism
can start to function more properly.
This is where the proverbial magic happens, because once your body
starts to function the way that God designed it to, you can then do a
more rigorous type of detoxification, like I mentioned in a previous
lesson with a woman that I coached completely getting her off of
all supplementation, walking her through a water fast, and then an
elimination diet. With that, with topical application of some really good
essential oils, some healing salves, and eating the right foods, her
condition was completely resolved.
Importance of Emotional Detoxification
Now, let’s talk about something many people don’t even mention when
it comes to detoxification, and I call it emotional detoxification. Not too
long ago, detoxing was reserved for the most extreme natural health
groups. Today, it has become a household name, and even those people
with just the slightest concern about their emotional healing have
jumped on the bandwagon.
The point of detoxification is to flush out toxins and other harmful

substances, like we just mentioned, helping you recharge your body
and improve overall health. But while physical cleanses certainly have
a variety of health benefits when done correctly, emotional health--an
important part of your overall wellness--is overlooked.
An emotional health cleanse will help you handle emotions with ease
and detox your entire system so that you could reach your full potential
and enjoy the abundant life.
As you recall from Lesson One: The Gut-Skin-Brain Axis, emotional well-
being is absolutely critical to beating skin disorders. Trust me, it’s really
that important and I invite you to come along on a short journey with
me.
I find it rather surprising that no one seems to be talking about

emotional health in the context of skin disorders. Both positive and
negative emotions are important and part of being human. But when
we can’t manage them properly, we could find ourselves in a downward
spiral fast. This can have a serious impact on every aspect of our lives,
especially our skin health.
We’ve all been there. After a stretch of poor eating habits and other
unhealthy activities, our bodies start to feel sluggish and ill. The holidays
in which many people take a break from eating healthy to indulge in
Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas cookies and other New Year’s treats
are an instance, one example.
Or maybe we went one too many happy hours with colleagues or

clients after work. You see, when bad chemicals build up in our bodies,
it causes a toxic overload. This can make us feel lethargic or even make
us sick. In a similar way, negative emotions can build up in our bodies
too. This can weigh heavily on our minds, our spirits, and bodies when
ignored.
Just as a physical detox removes the chemicals and other toxins that
make us sick, an emotional healing detox will help cleanse all the
negative emotions that plague our minds and spirits. Toxic emotions
build up over time and begin to have an impact on our relationships,
careers, and overall stress levels. Our bodies even begin to take a toll
and oftentimes our skin manifests with eczema, psoriasis, and other
disorders.
With an emotional healing detox, individuals can regain control of their

lives with mental balance, and eventually happiness. This is important
to ensure that we are getting the most out of life. So how do you
know if you need emotional healing? Life is just one big rollercoaster.
Experiencing extreme emotions is part of what makes us human. We
face challenges every day that cause us to experience negative feelings.
And while almost everyone can benefit from an emotional healing detox,
anyone currently experiencing toxic emotions may want to start sooner
than later. Here are a few signs you need an emotional healing detox.
Anyone experiencing negative emotions or thoughts should consider
an emotional healing cleanse. Like these: anger, resentment, regret,
hurt, discouragement, bitterness, shame, sorrow, powerlessness, and
hopelessness.
According to Dr. Karen Swartz, the director of the Mood Disorders Adult
Consultation Clinic at the John Hopkins Hospital, “[t]here is an enormous
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physical burden to being hurt and disappointed.” Over time, any or all of
these negative emotions can build up and begin to harm our mental and
physical health.
In Dr. Swartz’s words, “[c]hronic emotions such as anger and hurt can
lead to increased heart rates, higher blood pressure, and poor immune
response, all of which can ultimately lead to higher risk of depression,
heart disease, diabetes, and other serious conditions” that I would
include eczema, psoriasis, and skin disease.
You see, when your immune system is down, your overall health is
at risk. This is a good sign that you need an emotional healing detox.
Among many other contributing factors, chronic stress is a primary
cause of a weakened immune system, and chronic stress, as a result of
negative emotions, can certainly have an effect on your skin health.
“Stress and other negative feelings can make it harder to recover from
an illness,” according to the American Psychological Association. In one
study, cardiac patients with chronic stress faced higher risks and poorer
outcomes than those not experiencing stress. Plus, stress and other
negative emotions can make preexisting conditions worse, like skin
flare-ups.
And then there’s the gut connection. Like we learned in Lesson One,
the brain has a direct impact on gastrointestinal health, and negative
emotions can have an impact as well.
Emotions such as anger, anxiety, and sadness can all trigger symptoms
in your gut. These symptoms can include nausea, upset stomach, reflux,
and leaky gut.
People who experience gastrointestinal issues on a regular basis

have seen significant results after an emotional healing cleanse. And
according to a review conducted by Harvard Medical School, “[p]
sychosocial factors influence the actual physiology of the gut as well as
symptoms. In other words, stress (or depression or other psychosocial
factors) can affect movement and contractions of the GI tract, make
inflammation worse, or perhaps make you more susceptible to
infection” and skin disorders.
The review, which looked at 13 different studies, found that patients

who tried psychologically based methods in addition to orthodox
medical treatment saw a larger improvement in digestive health issues
than those treated with conventional methods alone.
Taking regular emotional healing detox breaks will help you handle your
emotions with ease and cleanse your entire system so that you could
reach your full potential and enjoy an abundant life without eczema,
psoriasis, or skin disease. While detoxing your emotions is important, it’s
easier said than done. I get that.
[10:00]
That’s why I have 11 tips to help you, to give you a starting point for
setting out on your emotional healing journey. I’ve ordered these steps
by which I find them most important. If you tackle each one at a time,
you’ll be well on your way to living the abundant life.
Step 1 – Forgive Others
First, forgiving others. We’ve all been hurt by someone at one time or
another, but holding onto that pain is one of the unhealthiest things you
could do. Letting go of the past and forgiving those who have wronged
you is the first step to emotional detoxification, and a grudge can not
only weigh on you mentally and emotionally but physically as well.
The longer you keep these grudges, the more the negative feelings have
time to take root on your soul. Research has also suggested that feeling
wronged or harboring unforgiveness is directly linked to chronic fatigue
and fibromyalgia. And God only knows what it could truly do to skin
disorders like eczema, psoriasis, and skin disease.
There’s good news, though. Letting go and forgiving can help you release
the metaphorical and physical burdens that have been impacting your
health. Stop fighting and start forgiving, and the results may surprise
you.
In fact, research has shown that people who forgive identify hills to be
less steep and could jump higher in a test of fitness. It’s all about your
mental attitude. Forgiveness is so powerful that once you forgive those
who wronged you, your entire outlook on life can change.
Step 2 – Forgive Yourself
And while you’re forgiving others, don’t forget to forgive yourself. It’s the
Golden Rule: “Love others as you love yourself.” What if you don’t love
yourself? What if you look into the mirror and loathe the person looking
back at you?
This is where the second step of emotional detoxification comes into

play. By forgiving yourself, you’ll find it easier to release those toxic
emotions that have built up over the years. Regret and shame are two
negative emotions that can quickly take over your psyche and take
control of your mind and spirit. Stop blaming yourself for the past and
look toward the future in achieving your full potential.
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A survey conducted with 266 healthy college students found that self-
forgiveness has a positive impact on physical health. The study proved
that going beyond forgiving others and actually forgiving yourself is an
integral physical health practice.
So, how do you forgive yourself, you may ask? Start by realizing that the
past is the past, and no amount of mourning or regret can change that.
Move on, slowly if needed, and focus on things you could change.
I discuss forgiveness therapy in depth in The Essential Oils Apothecary,

and one thing we did for people that buy the book is we created a
forgiveness therapy video. Simply go to EOApothecary.com, pick up the
book, and then let me walk you through all these different do-it-yourself
demo videos, including forgiveness therapy, and you’ll find how truly
easy and empowering it could be.
Step 3 – Practice Self-Love
Number three is practice self-love. Now that you have forgiven yourself
and others, it’s time to love yourself. Self-love is the next step in an
emotional cleanse. We’re bombarded on a daily basis with images,
especially in the media, of what we should look and feel like. This can
have harmful effects on us and cause us to feel hurt, shame, or even
be discouraged. But by realizing that you are a gift from God, made in
his image and practicing self-love, we can move past these negative
emotions.
Now, realize that there’s no right or wrong way to practice self-love.
It’s really different and relative for each and every one of us. As long
as you’re working to build your self-esteem, you’re moving in the right
direction.
And self-esteem plays a critical role in our physical health. One study
reported that those with high self-esteem had significantly higher health
status scores and fewer negative health symptoms than others who
needed an emotional detox and were guilty of self-loathing.
Step 4 – Recite Positive Affirmations
Number four, recite positive affirmations. A positive affirmation is a

specific statement that uses positive language to break the cycle of
negative thoughts and help you visualize change. Reciting positive
affirmations is one of the easiest and quickest ways to building self-
esteem and practice self-love.
Constant negative thoughts not only lowers your immune system and
your self-esteem but as I’ve documented above, they have several
impacts on your physical health, including eczema, psoriasis, and skin
disease.
Several studies have highlighted the impact of positive affirmation on
individual growth. One study found that using self-affirmation could
help you be less protective and more approachable when it comes to
admitting errors. This can help you circumvent feelings hurt by criticism.
Another study showed that self-affirmation can improve problem

solving under stress, which can have important implications for boosting
academic and workplace achievement.
Yet another study suggested that self-affirmation has a positive impact

on symptom management. This study examined the effects of self-
affirmation on chemotherapy-related symptoms and found that those
patients who practiced positive affirmations had a decrease in pain,
tiredness, drowsiness, lack of appetite, depression, anxiety, and lack of
well-being. Who couldn’t benefit from that, right?
If you need some help with positive affirmations, go to our website,

NaturalLivingFamily.com, for a list of positive affirmations. Just search
them up in the search tool. Read these out. Print them. Tape them to
your bathroom mirror, computer monitor, or steering wheel, wherever.
Not your steering wheel. Be careful. You don’t want to get in trouble.
Go the extra level and print a travel-size version, and you can carry it
with you at all times. It’ll make the difference.
Step 5 – Don’t Look Back
Number five, don’t look back. Now that you’ve made it this far and you
have the fundamentals behind you, don’t look back. Hindsight is 20/20,
and it’s easy to look back and regret the decisions we have made. Don’t
do it.
While it’s natural to regret when you’ve made a mistake or taken a

wrong path, coping with that regret is important to maintaining proper
physical and skin health.
Researchers at Concordia University conducted a study that examined

the difference between how younger and older adults cope with
regret. Those who were shown case studies of people worse off than
themselves saw significant emotional well-being improvements over
the course of several months. In essence, the study suggests that being
thankful for what you have now may be the key to effectively coping
with regret.
While learning to cope with regret can take time, there are a few ways
you can go on letting go. Remind yourself that life is a journey. Remind
yourself that everyone makes mistakes. Remind yourself how great you
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are on a daily basis. You’re created in God’s image.
You should look at the past as a learning opportunity instead of dwelling

on the things you did wrong. Learn from those mistakes. When you look
at the past in this light, positive change will come.
Step 6 – Have a Good Cry by Yourself
We’ve all had moments in private where we just break out in tears for
one reason or another, and there are many emotional benefits for
crying. Whether you’ve lost a loved one, ended a relationship, or have
witnessed a touching moment, shedding tears is a great way to express
your emotions and to learn more about yourself.
Crying is also beneficial to an emotional detox. Tears are therapeutic,

according to the American Psychological Association, at least. In fact,
according to research conducted by biochemist Dr. William Frey II, crying
releases many toxic substances from the body, including those found in
cortisol, the stress hormone. It’s a physical detoxification strategy.
Crying relieves stress and elevates your mood. One study from the
University of South Florida found that crying can be self-soothing, and 90
percent of those people who cried found that it actually improved their
mood. You’ve just got to let go and take it off of your balance sheet and
put it on God’s, as Mama Z always says.
Whenever you feel like you may need an emotional release, you might
want to try to have a good cry in private before sharing your hurt with a
friend or a loved one, because not everyone is trained to handle these
things, and maybe you’re trying to share something with someone who
can’t even handle their own pain, let alone yours.
Step 7 – Cry with Someone You Trust
Then, cry with someone you trust. After you have cried it out on your
own and learned to forgive and practice self-love, it’s now time to speak
with a close friend, loved one, or even a professional counselor.
Since we all hold onto negative feelings such as regret, stress, fear, and
anger at times, it’s important to talk with someone who can relate to
your situation. A support system of that nature will help you heal quicker
and maintain an emotional balance in the long run. In fact, research
confirms strong social and emotional support is a powerful stress buster
that improves health and prolongs life, according to The American
Institute of Stress.
However, it’s important that you don’t open up and dump your toxic
emotions on just anyone. Remember, sharing details of this nature gives
the other person an open window into very intimate parts of your life
and into your very soul. Try to find less judgmental people to confide in.
This is where speaking with a professional may be better than some of
your friends, quite frankly.
Step 8 – Keep the Faith
Number eight, keep the faith. Ask yourself this: Do I deserve to be well?
Do I believe emotional stability, and therefore, the abundant life, is
possible? If you answered yes to these questions, you’re ready to move
on. Having faith in yourself is the next phase of an emotional detox.
It’s not enough just to go through the motions if you really don’t believe
in yourself. As we discussed earlier, negative self-talk has an impact on
your emotional and physical state.
Once you have convinced yourself that an emotional cleanse is possible,

you will begin to develop positive feelings and emotions, which will push
you to succeed in life.
[20:00]
Not only is an emotional detox within your reach but I believe it’s within
your God-given right to be happy, healthy, and emotionally stable.
Step 9 – Find a Healthy Retreat
Number nine, finding a healthy retreat. So many factors affect our

emotional health. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that our environment
is one of the biggest contributing factors. Finding a quiet, relaxing
place to sit and reflect is absolutely vital to restoring our mental and
emotional balance and finding our center and peace.
This could be hard when kids, coworkers, or other people surround

you all the time. Breaking free from the chaos is integral to emotional
freedom. Find a quiet place and go there. For me, that quiet place is
God’s creation. Open, natural spaces bring a sense of calm to many
people, including myself.
In fact, nature has proven benefits at helping people concentrate than

more urban settings. Visit a local park, take a walk or hike, or just find a
place to sit and take in all that God has created. Your health depends on
it.
Step 10 – Remove Distractions
Number 10, remove distractions. An important part of an emotional

detox is to avoid distractions at almost any cost. People, places, and
things can all distract from what truly is important, which is your
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emotional health. While you work to cleanse negative emotions, you are
more susceptible to hurt because your guard is down.
Be honest with yourself when opening up to others and avoid those who
may feed on negative thoughts. These people will do anything to stop
you from achieving a full emotional cleanse. Stay away from them.
Likewise, you should also avoid places or situations with similar motives.
Time after time I see people visit places that are associated with negative
memories. This self-destructive behavior is counterproductive.
If you have yet to get to a place in which you can cope with these
memories in a healthy way, you should avoid dredging them up. Instead,
you should focus on surrounding yourself with positive people and
creating new, positive memories.
Step 11 – Ditch Social Media
And last, number 11, ditch social media. Yes, I know, this one is easier
said than done, but our addictive relationship with social media is
unhealthy. Take a break from Facebook and other social media sites, at
least while you’re in recovery.
In the meantime, be sure to keep in touch with family and friends, which
is extremely important. The negative effects of social media far outweigh
the positive during an emotional detox.
Facebook, for example, can trigger--and oftentimes does--feelings of

jealousy and envy and cause you to develop unrealistic comparisons,
according to one study. Same thing with Instagram. This has serious
consequences on your overall well-being and can even lead to
depression if you’re constantly comparing yourself to others.
Another study found that those who took a week-long break from social
media were happier and had significantly more satisfying lives. This
research is evidence that taking a social media fast is imperative to an
emotional cleanse.
Bonus Step – Self-Care
Then, there’s self-care. Once you’ve completed each step successfully, it’s
important to maintain that emotional stability and take care of yourself.
We’re all busy, and it’s easy to forget to look out for numero uno. Take
time to pamper yourself with a nice long bath, a spa day, or just getting
out of the house or the office to enjoy some fresh air. You deserve it.
Our favorite bath, for example, is an evening detox bath, which Mama
Z and I will show you how to make in just a minute. Well, that’s it. That’s
a wrap. Now, let’s make some DIY goodies with Mama Z from our book,
The Essential Oils Apothecary.
Restful Evening Detox Bath
Dr. Z: If there’s one thing that we all should do, and especially if you’re
battling a chronic condition, or if you have eczema, psoriasis, a skin
disorder, whatever it might be, is a detox bath. We were actually just
talking just before we started filming about all of our friends and family
members from--you name it--this helps in so many ways.
And the reason why we cover the detox bath…we could have covered it,
quite frankly, in any chapter of this book, but we covered it in the anxiety
and stress chapter is because I don’t know of any other way of just
offloading after a busy, stressful day, allowing yourself to just relax an
decompress. Allow the aroma therapy through the essential oils to truly
trigger that parasympathetic, that rest and digest state. Maybe put some
nontoxic candles, some nice, soothing music. You have your spa day.
Now it has a wonderful, a wonderful emotional detoxification effect, but

what it does to your body, what it does to your skin, is fantastic. So it’s
one of the things that we do, whether our children have a fever, whether
we’re sick, whether we’re just stressed, whether we just did a 5K with the
kids and our muscles are angry at us and we just--
Sabrina: Or you got a massage and you know you’re gonna be sore that
next day.
Dr. Z: This is one of those that we recommend for everybody, and

you could do this every single day. All right? So I want to preface…and
I’ll let Mama Z talk all about the bath, because this is her jam. This is
her recipe. But I want to stress…I want to read something for you all,
because this brings into the reality that we need as much as possible to
use the best water that we could use.
So if you only have unfiltered tap water in your bath tub, that’s better
than nothing. But the concern we have are the more chemicals,
especially the fluoride and the chlorine, and hard water, what that does
to your skin is extremely drying and damaging.
And in 2016, there was a study done that showed--and this was of
thousands of babies in United Kingdom--that babies that lived in an area
with hard water were up to 87 percent more likely to have eczema than
not. Just let that sink in. From the University of Sheffield.
Hard water damages our protective skin barrier--which, if you’ve heard

me say this, I’ll say it once, say it a million times--your skin barrier is
your first defense of your immune system. We all talk about IGs. We all
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talk about immunoglobulins. We all talk about immune function. But if
your skin is not intact, you’re already starting at a disadvantage for viral,
bacterial, fungal threats.
“Hard water damages our protective skin barrier and could contribute to
the development of eczema,” a new study has shown. So “[r]esearchers
from the University of Sheffield”--this was in 2017—“and Kings College
London have discovered that exposing the skin to hard water damages
the skin barrier”--it can cause leaky skin. We cover leaky skin in the
book--“which is our defense against outside threats such as bacteria
or sunburn,” and hard water can increase the sensitivity of your skin
to potential irritants found in everyday wash products such as soap or
washing powder.
What is that saying? If you’re using regular tap water that has a tendency
to be hard…again, get your tap water tested, if you’re using tap water. If
you have hard water, it’s filled with calcium, magnesium ions, that bind
as surfactants. This is so important.
These chemicals, these hard water chemicals, bind to surfactants

such as sodium laurel sulfate and sodium laurel ester sulfate. These
act as detergents and wetting agents, making them insoluble so they
precipitate on your skin.
That is basically what I think happened to your skin when you had that
skin reaction when you were a teenager when it burned several layers of
your skin. Mama Z’s so sensitive to skin--she has sensitive skin, sensitive
teeth--that chemicals in the water really wreak havoc. There’s so much
to be said.
So the reality is, and this is a special tip for people that are battling
eczema. I don’t want to forget this, because there is a protein in the
body known as filaggrin, and there is a filaggrin deficiency, essentially,
and the DNA has caused the skin not to be intact, which makes people
more susceptible.
“Patients with eczema are much more sensitive to the effects of hard
water than people with healthy skin. This increase in sensitivity is
associated with a genetic predisposition to a skin barrier defect brought
about by the mutations of the gene encoding filaggrin. Filaggrin is a
structural protein important for the formation of our skin’s barrier to
the outside environment. Up to half of all people with eczema carry a
filaggrin gene.”
And the researchers quote, “This new study reveals the mechanism by
which calcium and magnesium ions in the hard water surfactants and
filaggrin interact to damage the skin barrier, unlocking new information
about how hard water could potentially contribute to the development
of eczema.” I would add psoriasis, skin disorders, and in the context of
chronic disease, this causes systemic inflammation, which that we know
triggers to a number of things, leading to heart disease, hypertension,
leading to stroke, potential cancer.
It’s not like hard water’s going to give you cancer tomorrow, but years of
hard water, years of chronic inflammation, this chronic overflow of the
bucket, the toxic bucket, that once it overflows over years and years and
years, we now put ourselves at a risk of Alzheimer’s, dementia, chronic
disease. It’s exactly what we teach in the book, and that’s why we’re
talking about this detox bath recipe. That’s my soapbox. I’m getting off of
it.
Sabrina: Thank you. I’m just kidding.
Dr. Z: You teach how to make this wonderful, soothing solution.
Sabrina: Okay. Well, this one is our restful detox bath.
Dr. Z: Yep.
Sabrina: So in one tablespoon of your jojoba--organic jojoba, or you can

use almond oil or any liquid that stays liquid--carrier oil.
[30::00]
Dr. Z: What don’t we have here?
Sabrina: We don’t want to use raw organic coconut oil. Obviously in

order for me to use some of our recipes today, I’ve had to warm a hot
water bath in a sink and let it just rest so that I can make our recipe.
When that goes cold, like in your pipes--especially in a cold weather
climate, but even in a warm weather climate like we live--it’s a lot colder
under the ground, and that’s going to go solid at about 70 degrees.
So you really, really, really want to make sure that you’re not putting that
in your pipes. Even if you’re oil pulling or doing other things, cooking
with coconut oil, you’re not going to want to put that down your drain.
We’ve known many of friends who’ve had to replace hundreds of feet
of pipe in their house because they had solid, wall-to-wall over time,
coconut oil.
Now equally, when you use certain products when you’re making hand
soaps or other things on the natural end, we regularly clean out the
areas in our sinks to make sure that they stay open, just because over
time using natural products you’ll have that kind of just natural layering
of things there.
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But as far as the bath goes, we’re doing things very detoxifying right
now. And we have one tablespoon of our carrier oil, three drops of
lavender, two drops of roman chamomile, two drops of ylang ylang,
and one drop of lemon. Now, if you’re doing a regular detox bath, just
a simple one, you could do one to two drops of lemon and six to eight
drops of lavender in that same area.
Now we’re also going to use a fourth of a cup of Bragg apple cider
vinegar. So first, I’m going to take…this is my favorite brand. It’s the Sky
Organics Epsom Salts, one cup. I like this because some of your Epsom
salts will say you cannot ingest them. So, in my opinion, a lot of times I’m
like, well, why would I want to bathe in that, either? So that’s the gist of
that.
So we’re going to use one-fourth of a cup of our Bragg apple cider

vinegar. And I’m going to explain why I’m putting it in this little tub here,
in just a second. And then we’re going to put our oils and our carrier oil
in.
Dr. Z: The reason why this is a special restful version of this is because
the more research that we do about eczema, psoriasis, skin disease,
chronic conditions, is the psychogenic aspects of it. People can literally
trigger an eczema outbreak if they’re stressed. And quite frankly, at the
timing of this film, it’s 2021. I mean, we just went through arguably the
most stressful year of our lives, and many of you can relate to that.
And even though we’ve handled this last year relatively well, it was still
unbelievably stressful and traumatic in a lot of ways, and how many
people have just gone through their own hell on earth? And whether
it’s because of a pandemic or whether it’s because of a marriage that
breaks or a job that gets lost, or a loved one that you lose, the emotional
stress that people go through, if you don’t have a way of managing that
properly…and this will help. It really will.
At the very least, this gives you a half-an-hour break. A half-an-hour

reprieve where it’s all about you, where you’re in a bath, you’re relaxing.
That right there will have residual effects for hours, potentially days, if
you do this on a regular basis.
But for anyone that battles a chronic condition, especially if it’s a skin
disorder like eczema or psoriasis or other things, we need to work on
the emotional balancing aspect of our natural living protocol. And that’s
why we include the ylang ylang and lavender and chamomile in this,
because they just have a wonderful anti-anxiety stress-relieving, like
literally puts you in that parasympathetic rest and digest mode. This is
actual stimulating to your nervous system in a good way to help you
calm and decompress.
Sabrina: So one of the things that I found is whether you’re detoxing,
whether you’re having a condition that you’re working through, you’re
losing weight, your body needs to rest more. I find that that happens
with me.
Every time I’ve had a baby, afterwards my body needs to rest more.
Because if you’re not resting then you’re not getting that regenerative
sleep that you need just even to think more clearly so that you’re not as
stressed. So this is a great way to do this.
So a little disclaimer. Some people have said, “You know what? I’m
allergic to apple cider vinegar.” If you are, you can always use fresh
squeezed lemon or lime juice in its place. And I’ve had other friends that
have done that.
When I first researched this recipe, I wanted to do something that I could

do while I was pregnant. I had done a series of detoxes prior to getting
pregnant. I think it was at the end of the first trimester, I’m like, “You
know what? I just feel like I’ve got to detox.” So I was on the path to find
something that I could do while I was pregnant.
And this was something that you could do no matter if you are a child
all the way to being a pregnant woman. So what I recommend is what
we just talked about here. Putting that in the bathtub, and putting your
water in as hot as you can stand. And you want to stay there for 30 to
45 minutes. Of course, if you are pregnant or you have other challenges,
you want to make sure that you have somebody else at home that can
check in on you, of course.
Now, if you’re doing this with children, you want to half all of the recipe
in that same big bathtub. And if you have an infant, you can take that
recipe in fourth and use it in their little baby bathtub as well. So you
want to do what we just did there. Pour it in and soak.
And then, my kids, they will fold themselves up in that tub. Even little
Elijah, he broke his collarbone, and he submerged himself, and he
was like, “I’m trying to get my collarbone under there as long as I can.”
And it really works, because it really helps with the healing. Even if it is
somebody who’s working through an issue like that.
And then for the last five minutes, I always recommend sitting up and
then go to your knees, and then that last minute standing. You really
want to take it slow. I know even for people a lot of hot water for a
longer period of time…of course, you could always shorten that time.
You can read a book. The kids, I’ve put a movie on, just do that kind of
thing. But this is not something that you’re going to want to do right
before you go run 10 miles.
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This is that thing that you do right before you go to bed. I wouldn’t
call it a demotivation bath, but it’s definitely putting your body in that
parasympathetic state, so you’re not going to want to do that when you
have something big going on the next day. It’s definitely after you have
that something big, this is the activity to do after that.
And our handyman made a joke yesterday. He said, “You know, after
every time I come over to your house, I pretty much have to go home
and do a detox bath.” I said, “What are you trying to say here?” But when
you work hard, it’s really important to let your body have that rest and
relaxation and that decompression time, and also that healing time as
well. All right?
Dr. Z: So when it comes to detoxifying your emotions--and we talk a

lot about emotional detoxification. Prayer, forgiveness therapy, which
is actually something that we practice on a regular basis and everyone
needs to--when you talk about physical detoxification, this is one of
those things that helps you with everything.
It helps the skin detox. It helps your emotions, your body itself. And we
just encourage you to really have fun with this, to make this something
that you cherish, especially if you’re battling a condition right now. Make
this something that you’re not willing to compromise on. And I’ll say,
between the two of us, Mama Z is definitely non-negotiable when it
comes to her self-love--
Sabrina: And self-care.
Dr. Z: Self-care, self-love. And I’ll use that word “love,” because a lot of
us maybe need to love ourselves a little bit more, to take the time to do
certain things like this. I get it. Especially if you’re a single parent or if
you’re running a business or if you’re just running ragged, to add half an
hour to your day might seem crazy.
But that’s some of that precious time, and for us, we use that time to
pray, to meditate. I mean, there’s no better time to meditate on God’s
sacred scriptures and to just allow yourself just to be grateful.
And that’s another thing. We know that a happy heart does good like
medicine, and this is one of those, a great practice to fulfill what I believe
is our journey, which is our calling in God to live an abundant life. It’s
one of those things to help us to really get away.
I think about in the Bible, how many times did Jesus have to go up to
a mountain to be by himself? I mean, just think about that. Whether
you believe the Bible or not to be what it is, we see the Bible as Jesus
being the Son of God. And if the Son of God needed to get away to
decompress, how much more do I?
We want people to recognize that throughout all different ancient
scriptures, the heroes of our faith and the heroes of our land, they’ve
always taken time to take care of themselves.
[40:00]
And I want you to be a hero for your family. And it’s hard to be a hero for
your family if you’re running yourself ragged. And so many people today
watching this have allowed themselves--myself included at times--to be
overwhelmed, to be burdened, and to get burned out because of what’s
happening around them.
And regardless of a pandemic, regardless of a health outcry, regardless

of what might be going in your life, you can overcome. And maybe a
half-an-hour self-love, self-care ritual can get you to that place where
you can be of better service to humanity and to your loved ones.
So with that, we’ll just bid you adieu on this, because this is a very, very
special recipe to us and our family, and to so many of our just Natural
Living family members online that we hope that you benefit from it as
well.
Essential Oil Detox Water
So as we already know, living a detox life is absolutely critical if you want

to be free of eczema, psoriasis, and a number of chronic conditions. And
we talk about detoxing from an outside-in approach, but also from an
inside-out approach.
And one thing when it comes to detoxing our body is you need to
detox what’s around you. Make sure you have a good high-powered
air purifier. Make sure you’re using body care products and cleaning
products that don’t add to the problem. Stopping the insult, so to speak.
So when you start to live this way where you’re using essential oils in a
number of your homemade DIY products, you find that your body will
naturally start to detoxify because the onslaught of toxins is stopping,
and then the body can start to recuperate. Because the reality is, the
body doesn’t know--really, truthfully--the body doesn’t care if it’s battling
a virus, a bacteria, a fungi, or a paraben, or fluoride, or chlorine.
It just sees something as a threat. And that’s why we see the same
immune response regardless of the type of threat, and it gets to the
point where the body’s on a metabolic burden, a metabolic overload.
And a lot of folks--and we’ve seen this through our diet book and
through the work that we’ve done helping people reach an ideal
weight--is just by stopping the onslaught of toxins around them, their
metabolism starts to function more properly and they start to literally
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lose weight.
I mean, when your body isn’t compromised--when the energy, your ATP,
when your energy is not compromised to break down toxins and to keep
you alive--it can start to burn fat in the way that it should. And it can help
you start to get better sleep and function better, and essentially heal.
So what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to incorporate this detox

lifestyle. And part of it is hydration. Because a lot of folks don’t
recognize, especially with tap water--and this isn’t going to be a water
course--but the reality is you have a great impact of adding more to the
toxic overload--and we don’t want our bucket to overflow--or we could
stop the toxic overload by hydrating with good water.
And this is a recipe that Mama Z came up with, which is something that
we use on a regular basis and we love. But the key is this. Especially for
people battling eczema, psoriasis, and skin disease especially, you need
proper hydration.
And the best way of hydrating your skin, quite frankly, it’s not topical.
It’s internal. It’s through what we consume. And high-sugary sodas and
juice, a lot of carbohydrates, isn’t going to help us hydrate. Drinking
water. Good, pure water. Now, what we do is we add some essential oils
to it. Mama Z will explain why she does this.
But ultimately, and I’ll leave you with this: the key to this recipe is it’s
rich in antioxidants. So putting things into context, essential oils are
great, and yes, some of them have iron chelation ability and the ability to
actually help your body detoxify from heavy metals.
But what they really do is using essential oils in fresh juice, and we love
the apple cider vinegar, what this does is it’s rich in antioxidants which
helps combat the free radical damage, which has a natural detoxifying
effect internally. So next thing you know, your skin starts looking better.
Radiant skin, healing from the inside out.
So, tell us all about your recipe, because this is probably, maybe, the
most confusing recipe. That’s why I asked her to do it. It’s one of the
most confusing recipes, because, like, what do you mean I’m making a
concentrate? Can’t I just put stuff together? Because we know that oils
and water don’t mix. You can’t just put essential oils in water. So how do
we do this, and how does it work?
Sabrina: All right. Well, it’s not hard, but it is a concentrate, and our
essential oil detox water is comprised of what he talked about. So we do
have to dilute those essential oils. This is kind of a marriage debate over
here, because we do like the Kal brand of stevia.
Dr. Z: My fav.
Sabrina: He likes vanilla. For the sake of our marriage and this video, I
used vanilla, but my favorite is coconut.
Dr. Z: I forgive you. [Laughter].
Sabrina: It’s about 50-50 split with the kids, as well, so we’re going to put
one eyedropper full of the liquid stevia. You could always, of course, just
use a regular unflavored one, of course, as well.
Dr. Z: And the stevia actually helps…it’s not a true emulsifier, but
it actually helps dilute the essential oil. Again, we want as much as
possible for the oils and water to mix through, but most importantly, we
want the essential oils to be diluted. You just don’t want to add straight
essential oils on top, and the stevia helps because most of them are
glycerin based, and they actually help as a diluting agent.
Sabrina: Absolutely. So today, we’re going to use 10 drops of grapefruit

and 10 drops of lemon. One of the other variations that I like to do is all
the citrus oils, so five drops of lemon, five drops of lime, five drops of
orange, and five drops of—which one am I forgetting?
Dr. Z: Grapefruit?
Sabrina: Grapefruit. Yes. But today we’re doing grapefruit and lemon.
Dr. Z: Twenty drops in total. That’s the key. Do whatever you want.
Sabrina: Yeah. Twenty drops total You can get a little bit more creative.
Dr. Z: Hey, can I go crazy and use bergamot?
Sabrina: No.
Dr. Z: Why? It’s English breakfast. Yes, you can.
Sabrina: I have tried it. You might like it a little bit better than I do, but I
say stick to the citrus oils.
Dr. Z: What about all the people drinking English breakfast every day?
Sabrina: Well, that’s you, not me.
Dr. Z: I love that, by the way. Bergamot’s great.
Sabrina: So we’re going to add it in there, okay? Now, we’re going to use
a teaspoon of fresh pressed lemon or lime juice. I did a little bit of both
in here. This is something that we keep in our house on a regular basis.
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So we label them. It’s actually my oldest daughter, it’s her responsibility
to press the fresh lemons and limes.
So we do that regularly so we always have stuff up and going. And we

use them all the time in lots of different recipes, so we’re continually
making more. So if you like to do something like that in your house,
I have four containers. So we have two, and then when we’re getting
almost done to the bottom of the bottle, we already have the next one
already ready to go. So we’re going to pop that in there.
Dr. Z: Good chores. What’s the Bible say? Train up a child in the way that
they should go and they won’t depart from it when they get older. Hey,
train ’em young.
Sabrina: Yep. Absolutely. And you can’t expect them to just learn it by
osmosis. They’re going to learn somethings, but they have to get their
hands dirty. So we’re going to do one tablespoon of Bragg apple cider
vinegar, which is one of my absolute favorites.
Some people tell me, they say, “You know what? I’ve been told put some
Bragg apple cider vinegar in water,” and they’re like, “it’s disgusting.
I don’t want to do it.” And I found that this concentrate, made
appropriately, has really changed that for other people, because they’re
like, “I know it has good benefits, but I really don’t like the taste.” This is
a great way of making an awesome concentrate. So why don’t you go
ahead and grab my water bottle? I’m going to show you exactly what I
do.
Dr. Z: And Braggs is great for digestive issues, acid reflux.
Sabrina: Yep.
Dr. Z: And any raw apple cider vinegar with the mother--and that’s the
little floaties--if you could see the floaties there, you don’t want to be
able to see through your vinegar.
Sabrina: Right.
Dr. Z: If it’s clear, transparent, it’s not what we want for healing. Now,
white vinegar’s great to clean with, but it’s something you definitely don’t
want to be putting in your salads or drinking with it.
Sabrina: Right. So I’m using distilled water. We, of course, have a

purifying system at our house. When we’re traveling, we’re using distilled
water. Also, I like to do this, as well, with an alkaline water. So you could
do it with either, but this is our staple.
And we’re just going to pour it in here. Now, because it is a concentrate, I

do always shake it before I pour it. And then I’m going to tell you exactly
what to do in your container, but I want to make sure we fill this all the
way up.
Dr. Z: Yep. The key is purified water, especially if you’re trying to

detoxify.
Sabrina: Yes.
Dr. Z: Tap water, rich--and not in a good way, but filled with chlorine and
fluoride, and hard water--you know, there’s more and more research
being done. One research study in 2016 discovered that babies living in
an area with hard water had an 86 percent more chance of developing
eczema.
[50:00]
Now, again, I know that’s in the context of the hard water touching the
skin in baths, but what do you think it’s doing internally as well? So it’s
just this whole concept. The reality is, if you can afford it, truly consider
an entire house system, especially if you’re battling a skin disorder like
eczema, psoriasis.
Hard water is not your friend, and especially the chlorine in tap water
can dry your skin. And some people are even concerned about fluoride
as well. So if you can afford it, get a whole-house system so at the very
least, when you’re showering you’re not adding any contributing factor
to any sort of skin irritation.
If that’s out of your budget, be sure--don’t compromise on this--

everything that you drink has to be purified. Don’t go through the tap
water without having it go through a filter first.
Sabrina: Absolutely, and our progression of learning about water, we

started with one of those little purifying system things, but what we
realized was it took the taste out of some of those things out of it, not
the actual items themselves. So it’s really important to make sure that
you have good clean water.
Okay, so what I do in my water bottle…this is just a liter. You could of

course use a quart jar. And you’re going to fill it up half way. And then, I
like to add one little teaspoon--it’s a little teaspoon--of Ultima, which is
an electrolyte that’s stevia sweetened.
So I put that in there. So we’ve got half filled with our concentrate, one of
those scoops. I put a little bit more of each of these in there. It depends
on how saucy I’m feeling. And then I fill the rest up with some more of
your water. And that is a wonderful drink.
275
I’ve had so many people who come over and they try it, and they’re like,
“Oh, my gosh. I have to have that recipe.” And we actually went to our
friends’ house for dinner, and so she emailed me, and she’s like, “Will
you share with me that recipe of the water that you make?” So then
she went and bought all the things so that when we came over that we
would have water at their house to have with dinner.
So, anyways, get creative with it. Our recipes are just a starting place.
Dr. Z: Yeah.
Sabrina: So this should give you some ideas, but this will definitely dress
up your water a little bit more in a way that’s actually detoxifying for
your body. It’s amazing, and the benefits are great too.
Dr. Z: The key, and we need to recognize that some of the oil, you could
see, is floating on top--
Sabrina: Yes.
Dr. Z: But, again, we need to remember the oils have already been
mixed with the stevia, with the juice, the apple cider vinegar. So it’s been
diluted. It’s dispersed. But before you use it, you just want to definitely
shake it up a little bit, and just know that this is going to last you multiple
applications.
So this is a great way of getting that natural antioxidant ability, that

subtle…again, this is not going to be a major detox for you. This is not a
detox protocol. This is a detoxed way of life.
And if this is something that you’re consuming, consume one 32-liter or

whatever, 32 ounce or liter a day, and you’re using your other natural
detoxification strategies, you’ll find that you might not need a major
detox. Maybe you won’t now need to go through that one-week water
fast like some people do.
Sabrina: Right.
Dr. Z: Again, giving our body what our body needs, quite frankly, is less
of the toxins, less of the onslaught, and enjoying the food and flavor.
And there’s another thing too. Enjoy it, right?
Sabrina: Yes.
Dr. Z: And if, again, a little argument, if you like stevia, vanilla or coconut
or bergamot or lime or lemon or orange…it doesn’t matter.
Sabrina: Whatever. Yes.

Dr. Z: Find what works for you. And you might even want to do
something crazy. What about frankincense? Some people like the flavor
of frankincense. You could do that too
Sabrina: Well, one time I saw “lemon” and I didn’t see that it had “grass”
after it, and so--
Dr. Z: Ooh, yeah. Some people like that, though.
Sabrina: I was like, wow, this is really different this time. You can get a
little bit more creative with it, but I find that my body…and you’ve got to
really listen to your body because…when I am, especially right now--our
baby’s six months--postpartum. I’m drinking a lot more water, especially
with nursing. I find that it’s really important to listen to your body,
because you might need more water.
I find when I’m detoxing or losing weight, getting back to my normal, I’m
nursing…there can be other factors that you actually need more water.
So I’ll find that I even consume more of it at that time as well.
Dr. Z: One of the things that Mama Z gets the most compliments of…you
wouldn’t realize she’s 75 years old right now. I mean, she…no, her anti-
aging [laughter]…no, she’s 42 at the time of filming this. She’s two years
older than me, by the way.
So marrying an older woman, I recognize that there’s issues of skin

elasticity and anti-aging, but the reality is she won--she earned and won-
-the 2019 Mrs. Georgia Pageant. So, I mean, you’re looking at a pageant
winner in her 40s competing with girls almost half of her age, and she
actually won the fitness swimsuit competition, and part of it was the
skin.
And one of the compliments people give all the time is how do you look
so young? We’re obviously wearing makeup now because we don’t want
to be like glowing lightbulbs with oil on our face. No joke. I mean, I don’t
like makeup, but we’ll use nontoxic makeup for video shoots.
Sabrina: Right.
Dr. Z: But she doesn’t have to wear makeup. And the thing about it, I’ll
tell you, is for healthy, clean skin, vibrant skin, beautiful moisturized skin,
I’ve never met anyone that is so diligent in proper hydration. And I say
that because it’s not over-hydration.
I mean, you don’t want to drink five of these a day. There’s a limit. So
knowing your body, like she said. And oftentimes, here’s a little secret,
too, to this whole thing. The more properly hydrated you are, the less
you’re going to snack. The less you’re going to eat because your stomach
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is going to be distended. And a lot of people, quite frankly, are snacking
too much, eating too much, because they’re dehydrated and they’re
actually thirsty. They’re not hungry, but they don’t know.
Sabrina: Right.
Dr. Z: And they’re like, “Well, let me just eat.” There is the benefit--the
beauty benefit of it, the aging benefit--but for skin health, we cannot
stress, especially for our brothers and sisters and our friends and
family online that are battling with eczema and psoriasis and other
skin disorders like rashes and simple dermatitis, it’s so key to properly
hydrate. And you’ll find that this will help you in so many other ways.
Sabrina: There’s definitely a balance there, and you really want to make
sure that you’re drinking good water and that you’re doing good things
for your body, inside and out.
Dr. Z: Detoxification at its best with essential oils.

FILLING IN THE GAP IN YOUR
SKIN HEALTH
Guest: Jaime Boyachek, BSN, RN, FNLP, CTNC
Jaime: Hello! Hello! Welcome! I’m so glad that you’ve joined me today.
My name is Jaime. And we are going to learn about the role that our liver
plays in our skin health. So, I’m going to go ahead and share my screen
with you, and get started.
So, let me tell you a little bit about myself. I’m a functional medicine
nurse. And also, a functional nutrition and lifestyle practitioner, and the
owner of a fun, bustling, independent health food store here in Arizona,
called Healthy Habit Health Foods. And I’m also the owner of Organic
Excellence, which is a toxin-free, bioidentical hormone cream and
personal care line as well. I’m also an author and speaker.
And as a conventional nurse, I’ve spent time in the psychiatric areas, and
mother-baby, and NICU, and home health. A lot of different areas. But
my true passion is really to help people understand their health history
and how their story matters to where they are today. Because we all
come from different places.
And so, we start by gathering information and assessing that

information. Then we can connect those dots. And then help you to
proceed with hope in making better educated health decisions for
yourself and to help you find health and happiness. So, let’s get started.
What we’re going to talk about today? We’re going to talk about the
role that our liver plays in our skin health. We’ll talk about what can be
helpful or harmful when we’re supporting our liver and detoxification.
279
And what you can do today to start having better skin health. And then
I’m going to introduce you to G.A.P process of how I work with people
and how you can implement that in your life as well.
So, weird things happen with skin. I don’t know about you but I have had
some weird skin issues happen to me. Some skin issues are more easily
identified than others. And finding the root cause of them can be fairly
easy. Or they can really leave you scratching your head, like the time I
turned purple on my honeymoon.
I had eaten some breakfast that second morning we were there. And all
of a sudden had a sharp pain in my stomach. And then my body felt like
it was on fire and I turned purple. Maybe not as purple as Violet here
did. But I turned purple. And luckily there was a doctor stationed nearby.
And they took care of me. But it was really my first realization that food
can really play a profound role in our skin health and what can happen
to us.
So, I just wanted to share that interesting story. And I’ve had a couple of
other weird things as well. But just in case you’ve had some weird health
stories that leave you scratching your head, that one was for me. So,
what role does your liver play in skin health?
So, let’s look at a little but about skin in general. It is our body’s largest
organ. I know sometimes we don’t think of it as an organ, but it is. It’s
our first line of defense against the outside world. It’s responsible for
keeping our internal organs, and muscles, and bones protected from
outside diseases and infections. And really maintaining a healthy skin
barrier is really crucial.
We have about 90 million skin cells, 650 different sweat glands, and 20
blood vessels, and a thousand different nerve endings going through.
And as you can kind of see in this picture here, there’s a lot going on
underneath our skin. Sweating is our bodily function that helps regulate
body temperature.
And did you know our skin renews itself about every 28 days? And I
really love that because it gives me hope that things can change. It’s also
home to a little more than 1000 different species of bacteria that help us
to fight infection, helps our immune system work better, helps us to heal
wounds, and also control inflammation.
Now, the liver is our second largest organ. And arguably the most maybe
important organ in our body. You cannot live and function without
a liver. It does so many incredible things. It filters and cleanses the
bloodstream. It detoxifies your body from dangerous chemicals, and
hormones, and drugs. It regulates fat metabolism. So, if it’s doing this
well, your liver will make the good cholesterol and not the bad, which
also will help our weight become easier to control, which I think we all
love that.
It also makes proteins and hormones which are essential for life. It’s part
of our immune system, and protects our immune system from overload.
It also makes bile, which helps to digest fat. And also, that’s how the
toxins leave, in bile. It also generates energy and warmth to keep us
alive. It’s really like the metabolic furnace of the body.
So, how are these two a little bit more related? Let’s look at that. So,
we’re looking at toxins entering through and toxins exiting through. And
I love this little diagram here because it shows that toxins are entering
through our lungs, our skin, our gut, our small intestine. But all of it has
to go through the liver to be processed. So, liver has a very important
job of keeping our bodies safe from all of these toxins that are coming
in, from the air we breathe, to the food we drink, to stress, to things we
put on our skin. All of that.
So, once it gets processed in our liver, there’s a few different phases that
we’re going to talk about in just a couple of minutes on how that works.
But it has to go through all of these phases. And then it enters, the
toxins and exit through our skin, our kidneys, our colon, and our lungs.
And a lot of the side effects and signs of a toxic liver are anything from
acne, and skin rashes, and allergies, and autoimmune issues, fatigue,
constipation, fibromyalgia, headaches, and hormone imbalances,
gut issues, neurological issues, weight. You name it. It’s like almost
everything, I think.
And so, if your liver’s not doing a good job of breaking down the toxins
efficiently, then they must be eliminated from our body by other means.
And in many cases, they come out through our skin. And some of those
ways that they come out, we’re going to look at right now. So, these are
the disease, some. There’s a lot that we can really cover, but I wanted to
cover some of the basic ones that I often see a lot.
Eczema, which is really a red, itchy rash that’s linked to an overactive

response by the body’s immune system to maybe a perceived irritant.
And that irritant could be a reaction to food. It could be external, such as
a reaction to pollen, or metals, or a skin care product. It’s actually highly
associated with allergies and asthma. So, it’s really important to look at
our skin microbiome when we’re dealing with eczema.
Now, psoriasis is a scaly, often itchy areas like patches. It falls into the
autoimmune category here. So, it has important implications really
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for the rest of our body. And people with psoriasis must address the
immune system and the underlying reason why it’s become hyperactive.
Liver health must be monitored as there’s an increased risk for people
developing non-alcoholic fatty liver issues when you have psoriasis. So,
a history of poor gut health and poor liver function are really crucial to
address, if you have psoriasis.
Now, rashes really can take on a whole different name and meaning,
depending on what’s going on with you. But really, they’re just an
inflammatory condition of the skin that can include so many different
things.
Rosacea. Now, rosacea is that redness on the face with broken blood
vessels. And often like, red, pus filled bumps as well. And rosacea
actually has a really connection with SIBO, which is small intestinal
bacterial overgrowth. Which basically just means that you have bacteria
that’s growing in the wrong place, and it’s wreaking havoc on your body.
So, there’s a big connection between those two. And so, the gut must
be healed, and the liver must be detoxified here. And sometimes this is
really more than just eating better, the things that you need to do.
So, some more skin issues would be acne. Now acne, I think most of
us kind of know what acne is. But the thing about acne is, it can be
triggered by hormonal issues, bacterial issues, medication induced,
diet, stress, etcetera. And so, you really need to get to the root of what’s
contributing to it. Like most of these things, actually.
Hives are skin rashes with red bumps usually as a result of an allergic
reaction. And there’s really like more than 3 million cases a year just with
hives, here in the United States. Now, I added Keratosis Polaris, which is
also known as chicken skin. It’s kind of on the back of our arms, is where
most people get it. And it’s not necessarily harmful per se. It’s a buildup
of keratin, a protein on the skin. It’s known to have a genetic factor to
it. And it’s seen more commonly in inflammatory conditions such as
asthma or allergies.
And I know that I was told, I had this really bad when I was a kid, and
a teenager. And I was told there’s nothing that I can really do about it,
given creams, a lot of different things. And nothing was helping. Well,
when I actually found out that I had an issue with gluten, a sensitivity to
it. And so, I took gluten out of my diet, and made sure that I was getting
enough essential fatty acids, which is also a contributor to this. It went
away.
And again, that was another indication for me on how food places a role
and then processing these toxins from the foods and things in our body
can really affect our skin. So, I just wanted to throw that little story in
there because often I was told that there’s nothing I can do about it. A lot
of my people in my family had it, and etcetera.
So, then I added cancer in here, the “c” word. So, those are just normal
growths of skin cells. You need to monitor the size, and shape, and color
of any bumps or lesions. That’s really important. If there’s any changes
there, definitely you need to get that checked out. But basically, when
your skin breaks out, this is your body’s way of really calling out to you
for help. It’s that red flag from our insides to our outsides.
[10:00]
And a couple of more just outward symptoms of poor liver function

would be lumps of fat, in the skin. So, particularly people get that on the
eyelids. It’s often an indicator of high cholesterol in the bloodstream,
which of course the liver helps process all of that.
Now, itchy skin. So, our liver produces bile in order to help you digest
the fat, and also excrete waste from the body. So, if the liver cells
become damaged, bile can leak into the bloodstream. And this can
cause the skin to become extremely itchy.
A coated tongue. So, if you have kind of a whiteness, coating kind of on

the tongue, that’s an indicator that candida and bacteria are overgrown,
which indicates a really high toxic load arriving to our liver. And the liver
is screaming out for help. It needs help dealing with this high load here.
And then, excessive sweating. So, liver’s the main heat generating organ.
So, if it’s struggling, you may feel heat intolerant. And then red palms
and feet. There are basically tiny blood vessels that become dilated and
increase in amounts in the hands caused by liver disease.
Now, what can be helpful or harmful when supporting our liver and
detoxification? So, remember I mentioned earlier we’re going to
talk about a couple of the phases that the liver has to go through in
this detoxification phase. Well, phase 1’s called oxidation. Phase 2,
conjugation, and phase 3, elimination.
And we’re not going to get really technical here. But I really want you to
know a few things about this, because this is where I find a lot of people
get hung up in supporting our liver properly. And it is so vital for our
overall health in general.
So, phase 1 - oxidation. So, this is where liver is really watching out
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for those fat-soluble toxins coming in from our gut, our blood, our fat
stores. And it is regulated by an enzyme called cytochrome P50, which
is the first step in converting these toxins via certain chemical reactions.
And among them are oxidation, reduction, and hydrolysis.
So, the phase 1 reactions really produce a lot of free radicals. And
these free radicals can really disrupt cellular function and damage our
cells. So, it’s really important here that I want you to remember is that
during this phase, toxins can actually get even more toxic. So it’s really
important that we support phase 1 and into phase 2 as well, so that it
minimizes the liver damage. And we can move these toxins out of our
body.
So, things that we can do to support phase 1 liver support. So, this phase
requires an adequate amount of amino acids, antioxidants. So, NAC
and glutathione. So, NAC is the precursor to glutathione, which is our
body’s master antioxidant really. We can also get them from foods like
herbs, and turmeric, green tea, things like that. But NAC really helps to
protect your liver. B vitamins are extremely important, along with folate,
iron, copper, zinc. Making sure you have a good ratio of those too. And
magnesium, all very beneficial to really help improve the health of our
liver and phase 1.
We can also look at some kidney and liver herbs support. Some of them
happen to be dandelion root, milk thistle. Now, milk thistle, you may
have heard of. It’s a really popular one for liver support. It has the ability
to repair cells within the liver and promotes regeneration of injured
tissues. It can also boost glutathione. But the important thing here is if
you have an allergy to like the ragweed family, then you want to try to
stay away from milk thistle and look at some other options.
Now, phase 2 – conjugation. So, phase 2 liver supports when various

toxins are conjugated into water-soluble form. So, we’re taking the
fat-soluble and we’re turning them into water-soluble forms. So, this
conjugation reaction involves multiple different pathways. There’s about
6 of them. And it really takes that first phase a little further by adding
molecules to the toxins to really neutralize them even further, so that it
enables them to be removed from the body via water or other fluid.
So, if the toxins are getting stuck in phase 2, the result is a buildup of
fat-soluble toxins that can lead to really many issues. And that’s why
it’s important that we want to make sure these pathways are working
properly, and we keep them clear. So, let’s look at how we can support
some of those.
Now, the key nutrients needed to boost phase 2 liver detoxification

include a lot of methylating agents, glutathione, and sulfur compounds.
And here, I just want you to kind of understand that there’s a lot of
people out there that have genetic issues that really makes some of
these processes harder to function properly. They’re called SNPs, as a
short word for single nucleotide polymorphisms.
But you may have heard of the MTHFR gene. That’s become really
popular over the last few years. People coming in, saying to me, “I have
this gene. Now, what do I do?” And really, it’s a matter of whether our
genes are being turned on or not. It’s really fascinating the more we
learn about genes. But Dr. Ben Lynch actually has a great book called
Dirty Genes, if you wanted to dive into that a little bit more.
But I really just wanted you to know that there are people who have
these little genetic SNPs or issues, that make it really hard for some of
these to functions. So, some of these supports are really going to be
very helpful for you. So, methylation depends on high levels of vitamin
Bs, and folate, as well as trimethylglycine, and choline. The amino acids,
and magnesium. We had already talked about they’re helpful in phase 1
as well. Methionine and cysteine, again NAC and glutathione are really
important here.
And you can also get those, I know we mentioned turmeric.

Nondenatured whey protein is a way to kind of help get some
glutathione, if you can handle whey. Pasteurized eggs, and onions, and
cruciferous vegetables, vitamin C, and taurine. And then of course like
the broccoli sprouts, are part of that veggie family.
So, the other thing here too is the sulfation detox pathway. And I want to
mention this one. It’s needed for detoxification of food additives, toxins
from intestinal bacteria, and the environment. And if you have issues
with wine or any other foods that have sulfides in them, you may have
an issue with processing the sulfur. The sulfides, the sulfur pathway.
And that’s also like I said, found in onions, and garlic, eggs, cruciferous
vegetables.
And I found out that I was having an issue with this because I would
try to eat these foods, or broccoli. “Eat your broccoli.” And I did not feel
good at all, and I thought, what is wrong? Eating these good veggies and
I’m not feeling good. Well, I found out that I had an issue with sulfur
pathways and it was not working properly.
But molybdenum actually metabolizes sulfur. So, if you can take

molybdenum when you have some of these foods, that will really
help support that pathway into converting so that you can process
that. Because there’s really a lot of great things in some of these
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other vegetables and things. So, molybdenum actually also helps to
metabolize iron, which is a vital nutrient to help move oxygen through
the body. And it also helps the body to detoxify numerous other harmful
substances as well.
Now, I threw this little picture in here because I often see people have
a fast phase 1 and a slow phase 2. And that was me where I would take
things and I would feel great for a day, maybe 2, and then I would crash
and feel horrible. And this was what was going on, in these pictures.
My phase 2 was trying to pick up all these pieces because phase 1 was
throwing them at me. And I didn’t have the nutrients and the support to
process them properly.
This is actually what happened to me. It caused an eczema outbreak on

my elbows and my skin, which was really painful. So, I really want you to
just have this picture in your mind that all of these phases have to work
in balance, together. And you need to be supporting both of them. If
you do find that you have a fast phase 1, grapefruit juice and quercetin
actually can help slow down phase 1. All right.
I threw this in here as well because I’m not sure if it’s really an official
term but I’ve heard a couple of doctors speaking about liver phase 2.5. It
was several years ago. And I found that it was actually really helpful for
me when I added some of these support supplements into my diet. So, if
we think about phase 2.5 as, it’s kind of like the door between the 2 and
the 3. And excess inflammation can really cause that door to stay shut.
So, reducing our inflammation so the toxins can get out of the liver and
into the bile is super important.
And there’s a couple of things that can help support that. Artichoke is
really helpful, whether you’re eating artichoke, or taking as capsules or
tinctures of that, can be very helpful. Now, pantethine. Pantethine is an
active form of B5. It’s an actual precursor to coenzyme A, which is an
extremely important compound, and essential for metabolizing proteins,
and fats, and carbohydrates.
It’s also the starting point for the body’s production of adrenal steroids,
cholesterol, bile, and hemoglobin. So, it can actually help to possibly
reduce cholesterol, and help support that door to stay open, and let that
bile flow. And then making sure bile salts. And there are supplements
you can take for that as well.
Now, phase 3- elimination. It’s the final conversion where toxins are
diverted for excretion in either the bile, or the urine, or the skin. It’s a
process that requires all of those nutrients that we just talked about.
Oops! Let me just go back for a second, So, making sure that the body
is eliminating these via our pee, and our poop, and our sweat, is really,
really important.
So, here are some things that we can help also to support this phase.
Foods that stimulate bile flow, and healthy sources of fiber actually
assist with this phase as well. There’s magnesium, helps toxins to move
along.
[20:00]
Chlorophyll, also helps to increase the oxygen, helps to build the blood,
and increases sensitivity of phase 2 enzymes to help them remove the
toxins into phase 3.
And really, it depends too on where you may be having issues with any
lung, and skin, and colon, and kidney issues. And when you’re having
issues in those areas, that’s where you might look at support them in
different ways as well. But you need to kind of figure out what’s going
on. If you’re not peeing enough during the day, getting hydrated. It’s so
important to help with detoxification.
If you’re not pooping 1 to 3 times a day, I know that sometimes when I

say that, people often think, “Oh well, it’s a lot!” But it’s not. That’s really
what we’re really supposed to be doing. And so, looking at those areas
in your own life would be very helpful to find out what support you need
during phase 3.
So, looking at skin as a detox pathway though, I just want to make sure
you say sweat, make sure you’re doing it. And I do know that it doesn’t
matter how you’re doing it, whether you’re sitting in the hot air out in
the sun, whether you are exercising. Exercise is always great because it
does a lot of other good things for our body. But sweating is just really
important.
And when I was a teenager, I didn’t sweat much. We would run wild at
school, and my friends would be drenched with sweat. And I’d be like,
ha, ha, this is really cool, I’m not sweating. And they’d be jealous like,
“Gosh, how are you not sweating like we are?” And I used to think that
was great. And now I know, my goodness, that was so not good. It’s not
a good sign.
So, make sure that you’re sweating. And then, once you actually start
supporting your liver, you will actually see that you do start to sweat
more, if this is a problem for you. So, make sure you’re supporting your
liver by sweating. It supports the skin as well.
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So, what can you do to start having better skin health today? Let’s look
at that. Okay. So, supporting your liver function properly is really the
best thing I think we can do before thinking about doing any big detoxes
and cleanses. And I know we hear those words out there, all the time,
especially during certain times of the year. And they can mean many
different things.
But I think if you start to do things gently, especially if you have a lot
of flareups in your skin. This is really important to start here first. And
drinking some warm lemon water in the morning is a great way to
jumpstart your liver, to start doing its job. So, that’s a great thing to do
to start your morning off with. Greens and juicing, if you can incorporate
even just a little bit daily, that will be really great. Your liver will love you.
Saunas. Saunas are a great way. Of course, they help you to sweat,
but there’s infrared, and red, and steam, and they do all a little bit of
different things. But if you can get hold of whatever you can, because
they’re all beneficial in different ways. So, as long as you’re doing
something, I believe that’s very helpful. And then, depending on, if
there’s other issues going on, it’s another topic for another day. But
saunas are great.
Fasting. Fasting does many things but it actually stimulates the process
of autophagy. So, in this process, the body actually breaks down old,
and damaged, and abnormally developing cells, and it helps to recycle
them for energy. Now, I found intermittent fasting when I incorporated
that into my diet several years ago, I loved how it felt. So, it really takes
that burden off your liver because, you’re giving it a break. You’re giving
your body a whole break from intake of all the food it has to digest, and
everything else.
And so, the organs then can really do their job, and without all this
excess stuff coming in. So, for me, I actually found that I like eating
my dinner early. And then I just won’t eat anything for the rest of the
evening. Some people like do not have breakfast until noon. Whatever
way you find works for you, even doing it a couple of times a week,
unless you have other blood sugar issues, you definitely need to talk
with your doctor about that. But intermittent fasting can be a really
great thing for your liver health, skin health, and your overall health in
general.
And castor oil packs. I love castor oil packs. So, they can really include
healing from fatty liver disease. It helps to reduce inflammation and
pain, along with just boosting the health of your liver. Also, lymphatic
system and immune system. So, castor oil packs really do a lot of great
things. It can be a little messy.
But basically, you’re taking castor oil and you’re putting it on an organic
cotton cloth. And you’re placing it over your abdomen, where your liver
and gall bladder are. And then you put a towel over it so it keeps the
mess encapsulated there. And then you could put a heating pad or a hot
water bottle over it for 45 minutes to an hour. And that can really help
move things along, and really do a lot of beneficial things for your body,
and skin too. It’s really good to help moisturize your skin.
So, a word here that I want to just mention really quickly. So, I
mentioned detoxes and cleanses, and there’s a lot of different things out
there. There’s also something called a liver and gall bladder flush. Now,
these have been used for years, and years, and years, and years, and
years. But there’s a little bit of difference here because these are actually
pretty taxing on your system.
So, I would really start with some of these gentle support things first,
and making sure you don’t have a flareup of things going on before you
were to attempt something like this. But there’s a lot of instructions out
there. But basically, you really need to make sure that you’re supporting
your body with a lot of different things, about 5 to 7 days before you do
this. Making sure you don’t have issues with Epsom salts that you’ll be
using. You can soften the stones by using [phosphate drops] or apple
juice, but be careful about the sugar content, if that’s an issue for you.
And also, if you know you have a lot of issues with parasites, you
definitely want to take care of those before you start dealing with liver
and gall bladder flushes. There’s a parasite called liver flukes, I can
have a whole talk on parasites. I love talking about them, and my own
personal and family experiences with them as well.
But basically, I just want you to know about liver and gall bladder
flushes. I just want you to be careful because there’s a lot that needs to
go into this. But I do know a lot of people have found that this is actually
really crucial to their healing process. Also, a lot of people tend to get
nauseated a little bit because of drinking olive oil, and grapefruit, or
lemon juice with it.
And coffee enemas are really great for nausea. Coffee enemas are also
great for something else, for detoxing. And if you haven’t heard, you’re
thinking, what in the world? Don’t make a face before trying it. I’ve been
helping people with these for over 15 years now, and they’re so helpful if
you’re needing more support, getting rid of toxins.
It’s really simple. Basically, during the enema, organic coffee is retained
in your bowel area, allowing fluid to enter the liver through the intestinal
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wall. It’s very different than drinking coffee. It does not give you the
same effect. But it has a stimulating effect, that increases bile flow. It
helps to jumpstart both your gall bladder and your liver. And this really
ignites the production of glutathione. So, that’s a strong cleansing
compound that really helps to release buildup of toxins in our system.
I found a lot of people when they’re not feeling good when they’re doing
cleanses, have headaches and things like that, coffee enemas really
help them reduce some of those side effects or Herxing reactions. So,
flushing out the toxins during liver cleanses, and supporting your liver in
general is really critical so they don’t build up. And move quickly out of
our system.
Now, this is another thing that really was a big missing piece in my
health, because I had issues, definitely in my phase 2 liver detoxification.
Like I said it was coming out through my skin, and having skin issues
because of it. But binders really helped. Think of them as they act as
a magnet for the toxins and then they carry them out of the body so
that the toxins aren’t being reabsorbed, because that happens often,
especially when you have a high load of toxins going on.
And that can be anything from like charcoal, or clay, zeolite, modified
citrus pectin. There’s several different binders out there, and
combinations of binders to use. But basically, you can take them when
you’re doing cleanses. If you eat something right away, and you really
don’t feel good, you can take them then as well, to help kind of stop
that reaction. And bind those toxins right away. But it really can help
like when skin gets worse or something new is happening. When trying
things to support your liver cleanse, make sure binders, you add those
in.
Now, let’s look at some topical options. I have this little cartoon in here.
“The good news is that the medicine cleared up the spots, but…” you
have stripes all over your body. And I thought that’s funny because I
often hear people kind of say, “Oh, I was put on this medication. I tried
this topical thing. And then, it brought on all these new issues that I’m
having to deal with.”
And this is exactly what happened with my son. And so, I just want you
to be aware. Not that I’m knocking those medications. I’m just saying
sometimes things happen like that. And so, if you’re looking for some
more natural topical options, let’s jump in and talk about some of those.
So oatmeal, you may have heard of like taking an oatmeal bath. But it’s
really simple. You’re just grinding up oats, or you already buy the oats
ground up. And you’re going to start with ½ cup to 1 ½ cups in a warm
bath. And you’re just going to sit in there for about 10 to 15 minutes. So,
this is really super simple, and a cheap thing that you can do that really
helps soothe skin issues.
Thyme out. Now, thyme out, I sell a ton of this in my store actually. And
so, I get people coming to me all the time that have eczema, psoriasis,
a lot of other skin issues. Even a bunch of bug bites. People have come
in and told me, this is really, really helpful. And I’ve seen the before and
after effect of it. And it’s really pretty amazing. It’s really thyme oil and
aloe vera. And so, if you haven’t tried that one, that might be something
else to try.
[30:00]
So, topical options. Some more of them. Ozone. Ozone is an inorganic

molecule with a chemical formulation of O3, as you can probably see in
that picture there. But basically, it helps to kill bacteria, and fungus, and
viruses, and parasites, and yeast in the air. And in and on our body.
And so, I’ve been using ozone for probably 10 years now, in different
areas. But we actually sell a bunch of topical ozone options in our store.
And they can be infused with avocado oil, or coconut oil, or olive oil,
or jojoba oil. There’s many different options, in case you have an issue
with one of those oils. But they are really helpful if that is an issue that’s
causing your skin problems.
And it was really interesting. I was listening to a talk with a couple
of doctors, not too long ago, talking about how people with rosacea
actually have increased skin mites on their skins. And how they were
treating them with topical ivermectin. Now, ivermectin is an actual
prescription medication that’s actually used for parasites. It’s actually
prescription here in the States, but it’s over-the-counter in a lot of other
countries. But I thought that was really interesting that they were using
this.
And so, ozone, if you know that you have skin mites or other issues
with bacteria, fungus, and other things, that ozone might be a really
great option for you. Now, probiotics, I mentioned before, there’s lots of
bacteria on our skin. We have a skin microbiome. And so, there’s a lot
of different bacteria that could be causing problems too. And especially
with acne.
So, one thing that helps with acne is, you can take a spray bottle with
about 3 to 4 ounces of water. You can open that up and put about 2 or
3 probiotics in there. You’re going to keep in your refrigerator after you
do that. But you can just spray on your face, or other areas. Or you can
make a mask with it. And you can put it with jojoba oil or raw honey.
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Raw honey can be really healing to the skin.
So, probiotics would be another option to try, if you haven’t tried that
before. And then, charcoal soap. Of course, we talked about charcoal
being a binder. And being very helpful for a lot of people.
Now, I wanted to briefly mention Montana yew tips. So, Montana yew
tips, I kind of like their name. they came from Montana. They’re grown
a lot in Montana. And the tips of these trees, they were actually used
many, many years ago, to make chemo drugs. Taxol is the name of
one of them. But it really actually helps to stop cancer spindles from
replicating.
And so, we actually sell a lot of this in our store. And so, people who
have maybe some suspicious areas, they’ve applied this. And I’ve seen
some amazing results. There’s also an organization down in Mexico,
[Clemson Clinics] down there that have been using Montana yew
products in their protocols for years, with great results. So again, always
get your suspicious areas checked out first. But in case you want to go
the natural route, this has been a really great thing, because it’s just a
herb.
Clean lotions, and personal care. They say the average woman puts on
about 150 different synthetic chemicals a day, maybe more than that.
So, just please use clean products. Pay attention to what you’re putting
on your body because what you put on, ends up in your body. So, it’s
really important to do that.
And then dry brush and exfoliate. Of course, not when you’re having
flareups of some of these skin issues. But this can really help to get rid
of those dead skin cells and toxins that have come off your body. And it’s
recommended that you kind of wait at least maybe 1 to 2 months before
really reassessing your skin after you change your routine with some of
these things, because you’ll have a clear picture of what’s working and
what’s not working for you.
Some other things I wanted to just briefly mention - food sensitivities,

GI issues, SIBO. These are a lot of other issues that can be affecting your
skin. They have to be processed in our liver. And our skin can really be
reacting to these things. Candida, parasites, mold, and biotoxins, and
viruses. Often a lot of these are an underlying root causes of why people
are having health issues.
And they go missed all the time. I see there’s lots of doctors that
don’t address these issues. And a lot of times people think, “I’ve never
traveled. I’ve never had parasites. Or, I didn’t live in a moldy home, or
I don’t know if I lived in a moldy home.” But I have seen and heard so
many people, and worked with them where the mold was behind their
dry wall. They had no clue what was going on. They didn’t know about
viruses and that they didn’t know about.
So, these are some really important areas that they add more
inflammation and so they actually give off a lot of toxins themselves. So,
when you have these going on, it puts more stress on the body, more
stress on the liver. And organs, they have to work harder to be able to
function. And so, all of these things that are affecting the liver, which
means they’re also going to affect your skin too. So, you really need
to figure out, maybe if one of these might be contributing to your skin
health and supporting your liver. And kind of working those areas.
So, one of my favorite things, stress, mental/emotional health. And

here’s a little cartoon here as well. “What do you have to comfort
somebody who is suffering from the heartbreak of psoriasis?” Listen,
studies have shown that stress and psoriasis can actually, they go
together. In fact, some people have really had their first flareup of
psoriasis during a particularly stressful time.
So, stress triggers a high level of cortisol and inflammatory molecules

called cytokines that really spread throughout the body. This can lead
to high inflammatory markers, or trigger breakdown of collagen on the
skin, and other things. So, something that is really often overlooked.
There’s people actually also that have skin issues and conditions, that
experience social isolation, stigmatism, depression, like I did, anxiety,
and even more. Sometimes people have suicidal thoughts over the fact
of what’s going on in their skin.
So, these are just some really things to consider. It’s an important piece
that I really don’t want you to neglect working on, when it comes to your
skin health, and the health of your liver, because it affects that as well.
And a couple of other actions that can help you.
Diet. I know I mentioned a few things with diet before, but eat organic
and clean as much as possible. If you can’t afford all organic foods, the
Environmental Working Group, EWG.org comes out every year with a
dirty dozen and clean 15 list.
So that means that the dirty dozen, there’s a high pesticide rate on these
vegetables and fruits that they’ve found, so you really want to buy those
organic as much as possible, because of it. But basically, eat clean and
organic as much as you can.
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The environment, we often don’t think about the air we breathe, things
we’re putting on our skin, the water we’re drinking, etcetera. So, really
making sure that we keep those clean. Clean up your environment,
whether you’re using toxic supplies in your house. See if you can swap
those out. Those are all going to be helpful to decrease the load of
toxins that our liver has to deal with. And also, ultimately our skin, as it is
that pathway of elimination for that.
So, really brief an intro to the G.A.P process. G is gather, assess, and
proceed with hope. So, this is how we work with people, using this
system. I love helping people learn about their health history, realizing
that their story really matters. Help them to be their own health
detective and take ownership of their health, so that they can really find
the right help for them, when they need it.
I find this is really important for people because once they know more,
then it really empowers them with the knowledge to keep moving
forward, and finding the help, like I said that they need. So, basically in
the gather, we’re just gathering health history, a timeline. I love putting
timelines together. When did symptoms start? You’re making note of all
of those things.
The diet, sleep, stress, relationships, mental, emotional, and spiritual,

looking at physical assessments. Anything that’s going on there. And
any labs. We’re really just kind of gathering. It’s like brain dumping your
health history. I actually have a book and journal coming out this fall to
really help you do that better. But basically, that’s what gathering is.
And then, in assessing the information. So, when I’m working with
someone, I gather as much information as I can. Then I start to really
assess and organize that information. I ask a lot of questions during
this phase. We’re asking where, and how, and why, and what, and who.
And really try to connect those facts that we’ve gathered up. So, it’s a
process. It can take some time. And sometimes you need to go back and
gather more data. Testing etcetera is needed.
But I have such a big desire to help people really become their own
health detectives. So, never stop asking the question of why. Why is this
happening? Why is this going on? What can I do about it? That kind of
thing.
And then, proceed with hope. So, this is where you glean the hope off of
other people’s positive healing stories. “They’ve done it. I can do it too.”
And this is where you really start to make those necessary changes. You
can start small. You find that one thing and you start working on it.
There’s always more options to try that you have not thought of before.
So, I found that that really gives people a lot of hope because whether
something’s working or something’s not working, it’s all information that
we can use to find answers.
And then, it helps you to also find the best people to help you. So,
oftentimes I hear, “I’ve gone to doctor, and doctor, and doctor. I’ve
wasted my time and money. And no one’s giving me answers.”
[40:00]
And when you do this work yourself, it really puts you in a better
position to find the help that you need. And then you are a better
teammate for them as well.
So, whether you’re looking for a doctor, or a nutritionist, or coach,

etcetera, it’s really about teamwork. And this helps you be a better
teammate for them, and helps you to find a better teammate for your
help.
So, briefly let’s recap real quick. So, we talked a little bit about the skin
and then the liver. And what role your liver really plays in your skin
health, with detoxification. We looked at a little bit of the detoxification
pathways, and what can be helpful or harmful in supporting your liver
and detoxification. And what you can do to start having better skin
health today.
So, think back through those. And just choose one. What’s one thing
that you haven’t tried before or you were doing and you stopped. Just
start that again. And then I kind of introduced you a little bit to the G.A.P
process. So again, how you can start today to become your own health
detective, and finding the right help for you, is to really start thinking
through your health history. It’s a really great thing to do.
And of course, stay in touch. I’d love to stay in touch with you. You can
go to JaimeBoyachek.com. Or oftentimes people are spelling my name
wrong, so you can also go to AdoptingHealthyLiving.com, where I have
a free gift. So, you can download it, just to thank you for spending time
with me on this summit today. Its going to help you dive a little bit
deeper into some of the things we talked about and then help you to
take some action steps in your life.
Also, if you’re interested in the toxin-free, bioidentical hormone and

personal care line, you can visit OrganicExcellence.com. as well as, I have
a book coming out later this fall, Your Story Matters, filling in the G.A.P by
gathering your health history, assessing information, and proceeding
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with hope to find a healthier, happier you.
Listen, I want to leave you with this. I know that over the years I have
dealt with some really crazy skin issues that have left me embarrassed,
and depressed, and wanting to really hide out. But I missed out on many
other things, many good things because of it.
This has really helped me to focus on the fact that really true beauty
is more than skin deep. It begins inside, physically and mentally. And I
want you to know that you are fearfully and wonderfully made. So, keep
proceeding with hope, as you search for answers for your health and
happiness.
So, thank you again so much for spending your time with me. I
appreciate it. I know that your time is valuable. I hope you learned a few
things that you can apply in your life and your health. Now, there are so
many great speakers on this summit, so go and enjoy. And learn from
some of them as well. So, I really hope you find answers for your health
and find healing.
WHY HEAT IS THE SOLUTION
YOU’RE MISSING FOR EXCELLENT
SKIN HEALTH
Guest: Robyn Openshaw
Dr. Openshaw: Hey everyone. Thanks for joining. I’m Robyn Openshaw.
I’m the Green Smoothie Girl online, and I’ll introduce myself as we go.
But today I’m going to talk to you about something you might not have
thought about for skin issues. And that is the healing power of heat
therapy. Many, many years ago, after I was injured by a medical product
and then my first two children were as well, we all got horrible eczema.
For me and for my older daughter, it was so bad that doctors prescribed
steroid creams. And I learned that actually those drugs stay in the
bloodstream for months and suppress the immune system.
So I became really motivated to find solutions that go to the root of the
problem. Today, I want to talk to you about infrared saunas because it’s
been so key in my family and me having no eczema the last 23 years
since we discovered how to detoxify our bodies and stay well from
there. These skin issues are actually fundamentally just like the skin as
the dashboard in the car, but the problem actually is internal.
And generally it’s related to the total toxic body burden or what’s left
after your toxic exposures are eliminated, the very best your body can
do itself so that what remains in the body over and above the best
efforts of your organs of elimination are the toxic exposures that end up
making you sick. Because these skin issues we come together today to
discuss, are actually evidence of the immune system misfiring due to the
toxicity of the liver. And sometimes other organs and glands upstream
and downstream of the liver are also involved.
The sauna I discovered many years ago, early on when I was trying to
figure out how to detoxify my body and my children’s bodies so that we
could get well for good is an infrared sauna. Now, this solution has really
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solved the problems associated with other saunas from all over the
world, making it so much easier to just have one in your home.
So bathing in heat for the purposes of purification or cleansing or
healing or detoxification. It’s an ancient practice and it dates back
thousands of years. And it’s been observed across many cultures
because it’s so effective. And it’s really growing in popularity today. Not
only is heat therapy being used more in spas and health clinics, but
more and more people have them in their homes, which is a great trend.
Because we are all exposed to Roundup, and medications, and GMOs,
and chemicals in common products, and food and water too.
So for the skin, yes, it opens up the pores to get toxicity out quickly,
but there are other mechanisms of action that I want to share with
you today. So three things that you’re going to take away from this
presentation is you’ll discover an ancient method of healing. You’ll learn
about exciting science related to saunas and the health of your skin and
your children’s and your grandchildren’s skin and the best sauna for
your health.
Now, why am I giving this presentation? I am a mom of five grown
children, and the beginnings are really related to the fact that my son
who was injured by some medical products, like I said, he got very, very
sick and is his health just nosedived. And he was actually in and out of
hospitals. He had horrible asthma and eczema, which later as I started
to research, I learned these are all related. Those and allergies come in
a cluster and it’s toxic exposure that really got this started for both me
and my children for similar reasons.
So I was able to get my son’s health back by detoxifying him. We radically
change our diet. We detoxified ourselves and we used a sauna. And
what I did after that point, after I got my son back, I was very committed
to these habits that I’d learned because we got our lives back. We got
our happy lives back. And so for the last 25 years, or however long since
I’ve actually owned a sauna, we actually used to take them to a sauna. I
taught my kids to get in the sauna the minute they felt a cold coming on,
any kind of symptoms to knock it down.
In fact, just this last winter, two of them were living in my house in Utah
when they got the virus we all hear too much about. And I was away in
Florida at the time, but they had already fired up the sauna and used it
once a day before I even got wind that they were a little bit sick. Couple
of my kids as they were growing up had a bit of acne, my two boys. And
they knew that if their skin wasn’t looking good to just get in the sauna
and it got looking better, especially when they did it regularly.
When I started using an infrared sauna in my home, I remember my
husband commenting on how good my skin looked. And he would tell
me that I look pretty and who doesn’t love that. I loved that my skin was
pink and glowing every time I got out. I look and feel like when I get out,
like I just got cleansed and purified at the end of the day. So I’ve been
researching saunas for almost 20 years now. And I researched and
tested a bunch of different brands before I finally bought my own about
15 years ago. My sauna is my favorite thing that I own. Well, kind of right
up there with my blend tech to make green smoothies, but it really helps
maintain a healthy lifestyle in this toxic world that we live in.
And the reason I was asked to be on this summit is that both Ryan
Sternagel and Eric Zielinski, who are both long-time friends of mine, they
know about how much research I’ve done. And what I found if I boil it
down all these many years of reviewing the published clinical literature
about the health benefits of using an infrared sauna often, or even
daily, is that while sweating is incredibly good for the skin to get rid of
a lot of garbage that comes from inside the body. And your skin is that
largest organ of elimination to get rid of it, and to detoxify the liver and
all the other glandular and organ systems that can get clogged up by our
constant toxic exposures.
But the saunas is on the market, this and how expensive most of them
were, were a lot to why it took me several years to actually invest in one.
But most brands were a) made of white wood, which allows bacteria
to grow. These cheap wood like fur and others or two, what’d I say a)
or one? Two, they were high in EMF or ELS. So while you’re detoxifying
of chemicals coming out of your skin, you’re bombarding yourself with
energetic pollution or three, they were made with treated lumber or
toxic wood glue, the off gas and/or four, and this is most importantly,
believe it or not. Those three probably seem important but fourth, a lot
of sauna brands don’t get to a therapeutic heat. So we’ll talk more about
that last one because it’s so important.
But I would say if the research on how much an infrared sauna can do
for you and your family is compelling to you, for sure, at least make sure
you invest in a brand that gets to 170 degrees. And that rules out a lot
of the brands right off the bat. That will make it easier for you and your
shopping if you’re going to go shop brands. But I don’t even sweat at all
in those saunas that the thermostat maxes out at 150 degrees. And I
don’t even know how they get away with putting a thermostat on there
that shows 150 degrees. Because I’ve taken a thermometer inside when
it’s all the way up at 150 degrees only to find it’s really 135 degrees in
there, not 150.
So that’s a good step you could take if you’re testing different brands like
I did. So probably what millions of people most know me for since I put
greensmoothiegirl.com up 15 years ago is that I’m an expert in human
detoxification. It’s not my formal education background. I’m a former
professor and psychologist, but I just share what I did to get my health
back when it crashed in my late 20s and my early 30s so that I can live
the life that I do now at 54, where I don’t need to take long naps to get
through the day.
And I’m not spiraling into compounding auto-immune disease. I was
able to hold that auto-immune disease progression that I know a lot
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of you have experienced. Where one autoimmune disease becomes
two, and then three, and then five, and more. And the way the medical
model treats it, is as if those are separate diseases when actually it’s a
progressive state in the body where the immune system is getting more
and more taxed and more and more confused. And it’s really no way to
live.
And the good news is it is optional. You do have to take some action, but
what I’ve done for 15 years now is teach people what I did that led to
radically different outcomes than back when I was injuring myself and
my children with some medical products that I really wasn’t educated
about at the time.
And we were eating that garbage standard American diet. It’s one thing
to learn about these things, but it’s another to decide which of the
various pieces of the puzzle that you’re actually willing to take action
on. We have taken 16,000 people now through a 26 day detoxification
process. And I’ve taught millions of people now, simple ways to eat
more whole foods. More plant-based foods, including green smoothies,
which I was out teaching on a lecture tour of 450 cities for six years
before anyone listening to this had ever heard of such a thing as a green
smoothie.
But the easy thing, the third thing that made a massive difference for my
family and me, which we practice to this day is actually the fun and easy
step. It’s not free to have an infrared sauna, but now it’s actually less
expensive than 15 years ago because of advances in engineering and
manufacturing.
So a sauna is utilizing heat therapy to stimulate the immune system, to
perform optimally and to flush garbage out of the body by increasing
your blood pressure to stimulate the circulatory system.
[10:00]
So it’s just increasing the throughput of garbage stuck in your body. And
it’s opening up the pores. Your skin if you stretch it out, would cover a
whole tennis court. I know it’s a morbid thought. But those thousands
and thousands of pores when they’re opened up, can really eliminate
more toxicity than any other habit you could take on. Or even any
functional medicine treatment that you might possibly get in a clinic.
So as you may know, by now, I’m sure Doctor Z and Ryan, like I said, both
really good friends of mine for a long time. And there are other guests
on this summit, I’m sure they’ve all helped you realize that skin issues
aren’t always just a disease or dysfunction of the skin. They’re often
really just the manifestation of what’s going on internally. So in order to
really heal from complex health issues like eczema and psoriasis, you
need to purify the body. Specifically, a lot of people really need to clean
up their liver and all the organs that are upstream and downstream of
the liver can be rather polluted as well with the lifestyle most of us have.
Plus things that we just can’t even avoid even if we eat a mostly organic
diet.
I mean the air, water, food, meds most people do feel strongly they need
to take et cetera. All the chemicals and pollutants in them, the products
we use. In another class, I teach about human detoxification and I go
in deep about all the different types of toxins, like what they do and
where they come from. But while that deep dive is outside the scope
of this discussion, just know that it takes some effort and it takes some
awareness to reduce your exposures too. That’s absolutely critical.
Replace your cleaning products, your laundry products, your skincare
products. Learning to buy the brands that go out of their way to get
the chemicals out of their product. That’s super important too. A few
years ago, I even did a summit like this one called The Toxic Home
Transformation with Ryan Sternagel, your host, one of your hosts
here. And we interviewed so many fantastic experts who taught us
and everyone a lot of tips to change their habits and their purchasing
choices. Above all, for sure, drink clean, pure water and eat as many
plants as you can in your diet, whole plant based foods. And as high a
percentage of plants as possible all the way up to 100%, if you do well
with that.
I’ve been at about 95% for 25 years now and I do a significant cleanse
twice a year. The skin is just the end point of all the mechanisms for
filtration or elimination of the body. When the skin isn’t doing well, it’s an
indicator that you’re not eliminating very well somewhere inside.
See the skin, you can actually see, but you can’t see your liver. And so
your liver becomes really easy to neglect, consequently. And you can’t
see a red, inflamed, irritated gastrointestinal tract for instance. You
see the effects of it in your poor elimination, diarrhea or constipation.
They’re just flip sides of the same coin, but you don’t see the inside
of your colon. You also can’t see a struggling thyroid that is confused
because it’s been exposed to a bunch of chemicals that slow it down. So
that’s a super quick flyby on why detoxification is critical for truly healing
skin issues.
A little later in this presentation, I’ll tell you about the incredible power
of infrared saunas for detoxification in general. But first, we will start
with what the published literature shows they can do for skin. Infrared
saunas can purify your skin by eliminating toxins and increasing
circulation. Your skin as an organ or as a system, it actually has its own
circulatory system, which is connected to your heart and your lymphatic
system. And the whole skin circulatory system is connected to your
whole body. But when it’s stimulated, it draws the skin’s nutrients to the
surface and it results in clearer, softer, healthier looking, and healthier
feeling skin.
And a lot of people in a variety of studies report improved skin tone,
improved color, improved elasticity, and improved texture after using an
infrared sauna regularly. So when you get a sauna, you should sweat. If
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you’re not profusely sweating, you’ve got a fauna that isn’t worth your
money. Sweat eliminates dead skin cells and dirt and bacteria from the
pores of your skin, leaving your skin glowing and clean. Plus it’s just
the biggest elimination channel for toxins. Like I said before, the skin
actually has massive surface area. So think about it, when you’re in the
sauna, think about pores, opening up and dumping from every part of
the body. That’s exciting to think about too.
In fact, it’s the only proven method for getting the most damaging toxins
out of the body. According to leading environmental medicine authority,
Doctor Sherry Rogers, she wrote a book called Detoxify or Die. And that’s
a terrible title, but it certainly paints the picture, doesn’t it? So the very
best sauna, there are very few of them that I would invest in, make you
sweat in a way that we like to call river sweat. It gets to a higher, more
therapeutic temperature of 170 degrees while most other infrared
saunas only get to about 140, 145 degrees. And like I said, some people
will sweat in that temperature. I don’t, but you just won’t get the full
healing benefits of this if it doesn’t get hot enough.
A study in the Medical Journal called “The Journal of Cosmetic and Laser
Therapy” showed significant improvements in skin appearance after 12
weeks of using infrared sauna therapy. Participants noticed a reduction
in wrinkles and crow’s feet, as well as improved overall skin tone. And in
a 2006 study, researchers found that collagen and elastin that are two of
the most important ingredients to healthy skin and slowing aging in your
skin, they both increased after exposure to infrared therapy. Participants
noticed less roughness and an improvement in skin color. They also
found that fine wrinkles improved by 25 to 50%.
In human studies, many toxic elements have been shown to be
eliminated from the body through sweat, even more than the
elimination that happens through blood or lymphatic fluid or urine.
So let’s talk about some specifics. Heavy metals trapped in the body can
be a factor in eczema and other skin conditions. The EPA has shown that
sauna therapy increases excretion of heavy metals like lead, mercury,
and cadmium. And we get exposures to these heavy metals from things
like dental procedures, or metal fillings, foods like cheese and sushi
and tuna, cleaning products whose fumes we may inhale, or topically
applied personal care items. Even the foundation and powder you use
to powder your nose.
So infrared saunas have been shown to remove heavy metals three
times better than traditional saunas. Saunas were actually used as a
primary treatment method for toxin overload for the first responders
after 9/11, who had to breathe massive amounts of burning plastics and
chemicals. So they use sauna treatment to remove harmful fat soluble
chemicals like PCBs and dioxins. And the thing is, residuals of drugs and
pesticides and heavy metals actually leave the body through the skin.
There are labs that will collect sweat from people who were in the
sauna and test them. And they’re just chockfull of heavy metals and
plastics and PCBs. After the sauna use, rescue workers reported
fewer symptoms, including improvement in skin rashes, respiratory
impairments, mental and emotional distress, muscle and joint pain, and
more. Many cultures of the world have used heat therapy for hundreds
of years. There’s Roman Baths and Russian banjas, and Native American
sweat lodges, and Scandinavian saunas.
But infrared saunas exploded onto the market 20 years ago here
in North America, because you could put one in your home with a
minimum of space and you don’t have to worry about moisture and
mold or bacteria growing, things like that when you use an infrared
sauna because it doesn’t have any water involved. And the Cedar wood,
if you get a good brand that uses Cedar, doesn’t allow microbes to
grow in it. Plus infrared heat penetrates deep into the body and it has
additional health benefits beyond the sweating.
Since these waves actually stimulate your cardiovascular system and
they stimulate hormesis. Hormesis is the same kind of low grade
stressor on the body that you get from doing exercise. It’s basically the
same mechanism. Sometimes stress isn’t a bad thing and hormesis
is that good kind of stress that stimulates a number of healing
responses as a body is heated from the inside out because infrared
waves penetrate deeply inside the skin and even to the organ level in
some cases, unlike other kinds of saunas. It actually helps detoxify at
the cellular level. And it targets your organs, it forces toxins out of the
organs and out through the skin.
Another great resource of infrared heat is the sun, but you can’t always
just turn the sun on. And a lot of us don’t have much access to sun half
the year. Plus of course, there’s the UV rays that burn our skin if we get
too much of it.
[20:00]
So in recent years, UV light therapy has been used to treat skin
conditions like eczema, but UV radiation is harmful to the skin and
associated with skin cancer. So the sun is good, but only in small
amounts. Infrared technology has a lot of the healing benefits of the sun
without any of the negative side effects. Like you’re never going to get a
sunburn.
So eczema and psoriasis. I know that these bring a lot of you here,
rosacea as well. They are inflammatory skin diseases. And in a finished
study conducted in 2018, frequent sauna bathing led to a significant
decrease in systemic inflammation. Not just in the skin, but throughout
the body, less inflammation. So by reducing inflammation in the body,
skin lesions should improve because many skin manifestations are just
showing you that something’s out of balance on the inside like the liver.
But also the kidneys and a number of glands. They’re all networked of
course, you cannot totally separate one organ from the others, despite
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how the medical specialties try to.
And then of course, you’re probably aware that these things may worsen
skin issues; chronic stress, anxiety, lack of sleep through excess drinking
of alcohol, smoking. Of course, you know, those things too.
So infrared saunas help. Stress, anxiety, and depression may all worsen
symptoms of skin disorders like eczema and psoriasis. But sometimes
babies, I know a lot of you who join this summit are concerned about
your children having these issues. That’s what got Ryan and his wife
Teddy, started on a journey of discovery. A lot of you are trying to
detoxify them from medical products that they were given because
those contain heavy metals and bacteria, and a number of chemicals.
PEG is polyethylene glycol, and they used it as the synthetic lipid layer
of a certain medical product that’s currently being pushed onto all
adults and children. And ethylene glycol is actually the main ingredient
of antifreeze. So PEG or polyethylene glycol is actually just a chain of
several of those exact same molecules and they are absolutely as toxic.
So sometimes babies and little children are exhibiting skin issues trying
to detoxify from the poisoning of the mother while they were in utero.
Or the toxins that come through breast milk, especially from antibiotic
use of the mother or other medications.
By the way, in case anybody’s worrying about that, for me personally,
based on my research having raised all my children to adulthood now, I
would still breastfeed my baby even if I were on a medication. This isn’t
medical advice, this is me saying what I would do based on my research.
I would still breastfeed, even if I were on a medication rather than use
an infant formula. But while we’re on that subject, infant formulas
themselves have plenty of toxins in them as well. And a little on skin
issues can be related to their diet.
And I’m not saying that to shame any mothers. All moms are just trying
to do the very best they can, but we are here to identify the problem
and discuss solutions. So of course, I’m not going to skirt that issue.
I can’t afford to not talk about those subjects. I, myself couldn’t have
been more well-intentioned as a young mom, and it was only from my
son’s injury. And then my daughter got this exact same injury, started
right down the same path after both of them have been completely
healthy. And then after two years of me and them being seriously ill that
I learned what was in those products that I allowed both my children
and myself to be injected with because I was young and I just trusted the
pediatrician.
So I’m not here to make any judgments, but I can’t in good conscience,
not share what I’ve learned the hard way. If your little one’s having skin
issues do what Ryan and his wife, Teddy did. When Ryder was a year old
and he was diagnosed with stage four neuroblastoma, a cancer. They
got in a sauna with him. Part of their solution was they still do this to this
day. They still have a sauna in their home. In fact, the three of us, Eric
Zielinski and Ryan Sternagel and I, we all have the same sauna for the
same reasons.
But just make sure again, that the sauna gets hot enough so that you
really sweat. Make sure it is made toxin free. Make sure it doesn’t allow
bacteria to grow in the wood. So make sure it’s made out of Cedar wood
and make sure it’s extremely low in energetic pollution, EMF, ELF, all
those other forms of radiation. So infrared saunas have been shown to
influence the nervous system, promoting relaxation. Saunas, just feel
good. My sauna calms me like nothing else can. And it’s perfect at the
end of the day, and it’s especially perfect in the fall and winter.
Using the sauna enhances your mood because it releases endorphins in
your body or causes your body to release endorphins, which are those
feel-good chemicals in the brain. So here’s a quick overview of how using
an infrared sauna regularly may help skin conditions. Removes dead
skin cells. You can use your dry skin brush before sauna use for even
more benefits. Get those pores open, stimulate that lymphatic flow right
beneath the surface of the skin. You don’t have to crush your skin. You
can do a nice light brush.
You’re delivering nutrients up to the level of the skin. You’re pushing out
toxins through all the pores all over the body. You’re supporting and
strengthening immunity through hormesis or that mild positive stress.
You’re reducing chronic inflammation and you’re decreasing stress
and promoting relaxation. So just to show you, these are some of the
references I used to share published data with you on health benefits, to
the skin of using infrared technology, especially saunas.
So these are the top benefits of regular infrared sauna use. Having one
in your home can do so much more good for you than just helping with
your skin issues. To get the benefits for your skin and more, you want to
use that sauna regularly, if possible. Especially if you’re getting started
and you’re trying to detoxify, use it two times a week or all the way up to
every day if you want. Just get in there for 20 or 30 minutes. And that’s
why it just makes sense to have one in your home if you can. Although
some people start by finding a spa near them, that has a sauna that they
can pay like 30 bucks a session typically for half an hour.
So I’m going to highlight a few of the most compelling studies about
some of these categories of health benefits. But beautiful glowing skin,
improved mood, relaxing, stress-relieving, immunity support, deep
detoxification, easing pain and inflammation, cardiovascular support,
improving mental clarity, increasing healthy, longevity, and enhancing
weight loss. These are the categories that if we were doing a longer
presentation, I would go into more deeply. But I’m going to touch on a
few of them just to share some of my favorite studies that show us how
powerful this habit is.
Saunas are a powerful tool longevity, in a study of Health Outcomes in
more than 2300 middle-aged men from Finland, where I read there are
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more saunas than cars, believe it or not. Frequent sauna users were
found to be 40% less likely to die from all causes of premature death
than those who never or rarely used a sauna. In a 2013 study in Poland,
a single sauna session was found to stimulate the immune system.
White blood cell lymphocyte, neutrophil, and basophil counts. These are
all types of white blood cells. They all increase, which could translate to
actually getting fewer illnesses or knocking something down as it starts
to come on. And you get your immune system mobilized so that the
infection doesn’t get the upper hand.
Like I said, the first thing we do in my house upon the first sign of illness
is we turn on the sauna. More times than I can count, when we feel body
aches or swollen glands coming on, whatever that first symptom is, we
get in the sauna. We take our vitamin C and zinc, and we never ended up
actually going down. Our immune system is fortified and the infection
or the virus just doesn’t get on top. The immune system manages it and
puts it back in place.
We’re all actually made up of a virome, and typically your body is one
third viruses. That’s right. We have trillions of virus molecules in effect
every single moment of our life. And when we get sick is when we are
too toxic and our immune system is struggling to stay afloat. But it just
starts to flip and go under and the infection starts to get the upper hand
instead of being kept in balance all the time like it was the day before
you got sick. And that’s why it’s so powerful to have a way to release a
lot of these toxins quickly while at the same time, activating a number of
powerful mechanisms of action in the immune system.
A 1% increase in body temperature results in a 40% increase in
immunity. I’m going to say that to you again, because I think it’s so
powerful. That’s according to Doctor Yoshimizu in his book, The Fourth
Treatment for Medical Refugees. He was a doctor who, when people had
failed out of traditional treatment for cancer, they came to him and the
whole book is pretty much about the use of infrared saunas and how
powerful it was for cancer patients.
But I’m going to say that again, a different way, Doctor Yoshimizu
discovered that by raising the core body temperature by just one degree
Fahrenheit, which you’re doing at least that in your session in your
infrared sauna, the body had a 40% stronger immune response. In a
Finnish sauna study of middle-aged men that I mentioned, frequent
sauna use is found to reduce the risk of developing two disorders
associated with age-related cognitive decline. So using the sauna
regularly decreased dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. And men who
use the sauna two to three times a week, had a 66% lower risk of
developing dementia and a 65% lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s.
That’s super powerful.
[30:00]
Also BDNF, which is brain-derived neurotrophic factors, those increase
with sauna use. And they’re responsible for facilitating the growth
of new brain cells to improve memory and brain function. Using an
infrared sauna is an excellent thing to do for your cardiovascular health.
In that same large scale finished study I’ve talked about, men who use
the sauna four to seven times per week were 50% less likely to die from
cardiovascular related diseases.
And let’s talk about healthy weight loss for a second. A single sauna
session can burn up to 800 calories. Yes, you heard that right. It’s
actually published in JAMA, which is one of the most prestigious medical
journals in the world. Journal of American Medical Association, a study
that’s about 20 years old showed that you can burn up to 800 calories
just sitting in your sauna for 30 minutes or 25 minutes.
So while I’m a big fan of daily exercise, and I do it myself as well, you can
passively get some of the same benefits just sitting in your sauna. I have
measured my heart rate many times when I get into my sauna and right
before I get out and my resting heart rate is really low. It’s about 50. And
when I’ve been in my sauna for 25 minutes, my heart rate gets up to 90,
which is about the same increase as when I’ve been on my exercise bike
or out for a slow jog as well. So pretty cool.
Saunas also help you feel calm and happy. We all need this lately. My
favorite thing about saunas, because you really feel it every single time
you get in it, it’s just the feel good endorphins that your body produces.
And endorphins help manage pain and it also gives you that reward in
your brain. And it makes you feel hopeful and happy and calm. So you
should know that every sauna company I know has delays in shipping
for a few months due to challenges in the supply chain and importing
parts.
But these are the things that you’re looking for. You’re looking for high
therapeutic heat. You’re looking for ultra-low EMF. EMF, ELS, those
radioactive sources of energy like pollution. You’re looking for safe, non-
molding, antibacterial Cedar wood. So if it’s more expensive component,
then you’re looking for untreated lumber with no wood glues used.
So just to wrap up, I consider the sauna in my home to be the most
important health tool in my toolkit. It’s just a great habit to raise your
heart rate. Like I said, mine goes from 50 to 90 in less than half an hour.
And it helps you get a fever here and there. You’re inducing a mild fever
to burn out viral and bacterial load. Is just a great health habit, like
going for a brisk walk or a jog. I love having a sauna for stimulating the
immune system. Anytime you might feel symptoms coming on, 95% of
the time after a session in the sauna, we never actually get the infection
of whatever type. Symptoms just go away and I don’t spend a bunch of
time in bed. And I really, really enjoy the benefits for my skin as well.
I’m sure that Ryan Sternagel and Doctor Z will point you in the direction
of a sauna if now is the right time for you. And if not, maybe you could
find a neighbor with a sauna who will let you use theirs. Everywhere I’ve
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lived, I’ve turned my sauna on to let a neighbor come over who’s trying
to detoxify from something or isn’t feeling well. Sometimes they come
over with their children. And sometimes spas or natural health clinics
have them. And you could buy a package of a few sessions from them.
Some of them have a sauna brand that doesn’t actually cause you to
sweat. So I suggest you get one session and see how it does for you
before going in on a bigger package. You might spend 30 from, I don’t
know if you’re in New York or California may be $50 a session. It’s pretty
typical to spend at various places in the US and Canada. And sometimes
you can negotiate with a small business to get a better deal on a
package of sauna sessions.
So God bless you in your journey to better health and finding solutions
for you and your family. Thank you for listening to this presentation.
I am the Green Smoothie Girl online, and I very much hope that what
brought you here today, that this information will help you clear up the
eczema, psoriasis, or rosacea that I know that Ryan and Eric are keen
to help you resolve in running this event in the first place. So thank you
also to them for having me as a guest.
FOOD TRIGGERS AND
SUPPLEMENTS
Ryan: Hello there again. And we are excited to be with you here today
for lesson six: Food Triggers and Supplements. And I hope, between
the last five lessons, you’re starting to get a pretty clear picture in your
head in terms of what really needs to be covered to effectively deal with
eczema.
To be honest with you, we’ve come to have an even clearer
understanding just in putting all of this together. Most of what you’ve
seen has been what we’ve learned over the past year, but breaking it
out into step-by-step categories like this has really clarified things for us
personally, and we feel really good about saying this is something we
wish we had to guide us in our journey. So we really hope it’s something
that’s been helpful to you, I suppose, is what we’re trying to say.
Teddy: Speaking of those categories, just to recap, we’ve gone over root
causes, something internal, whether it be a hormone or gut imbalance
or toxicity overload. That’s where either doing serious detective work on
your own and/or working with a practitioner comes in.
Environmental Toxins and Triggers, getting out as much toxicity out of
your everyday life as possible. And knowing what common, otherwise
mostly non-toxic, things can still cause irritation and a flare-up.
Bacteria, Fungi, and Inflammation—knowing that not only was there an
internal root cause but also once the condition has progressed, a whole
separate situation in a skin infection that needs to be dealt with and
having the strategies to do it.
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Moisturizing and Symptom Management, having the tools and strategies
in place to keep flare-ups under control, so you don’t get into a never-
ending cycle of itching and inflammation.
Light Therapies and Skin Detoxification, incorporating the healing power
of light from the sun and the use of modern technology, and learning
how to keep your skin clean of toxicity so it can truly heal. And that
brings us here to today, Food Triggers and Supplements.
Ryan: And I want to say right off the bat, we are definitely not the
experts in all things, food triggers in particular. This is why we have the
experts-supporting presentations on exactly that so you can hear from
practitioners who have been helping people navigate this for years and
years. This has been a really big paradigm shift with us, to be honest.
Coming from dealing with cancer in Ryder, where all we were concerned
about was flooding the body with nutrition and the healing power of
pretty much all the God-given plants under the sun. It was hard at
first to wrap our minds around the fact that, yes, this is a nutritious
and healing food, but right now, it could be really keeping Rocky from
healing. That was hard for us. And we did realize fairly early on we
needed to be cutting out foods from Teddy and Rocky’s diet.
This isn’t our first rodeo with healing, after all. And we already knew
enough to know that was important, but man, was it confusing? When
you start digging into everything you could potentially set off an eczema
reaction with, it gets to be a really long list. And a lot of times, a safe
food on one website’s list is a trigger food on another.
And then you hear that histamines are also something you really want
to keep an eye on. And then you start looking into high-histamine foods.
And that’s just as long of a whole list with a lot of foods that weren’t on
the general eczema list. And you really quickly start wondering if you’re
ever going to be eating anything besides sweet potatoes again for the
rest of your life.
Teddy: So more than anything, we wanted to give you a bit of the piece
we’ve come to on this overall and let the experts tell you exactly how
to navigate it. One big thing for us was the notion that we didn’t want
Rocky to be avoiding this laundry list of foods for the rest of his life.
That’s just not acceptable to us for our son and not at all what we would
consider any kind of complete healing.
We talked early. Really, the impetus for this class was when we sent out
some emails to our email list and got the flood of responses we did from
people who have been going through this for themselves. Again, it was
kind of scary, to be honest, to be hearing from all the people who had
been going through this for decades with no relief.
But even in a lot of the people who told us they’d gotten it under control,
the caveat was that when they had this huge list of foods they’ve been
avoiding their entire lives, they did then experience the flare-ups.
While we’re certainly glad those people aren’t suffering like they were,
again, we just don’t want that to be something Rocky has to live with
and don’t believe it needs to be something that he or anyone else needs
to live with. We’ve got all this God-given power to heal completely. And
that’s the story that we’re sticking to.
Ryan: And this isn’t just us saying this. This is what we’ve heard from
a lot of practitioners as well. They see their patients cutting out one
food and think that was the trick for them. But then they start noticing
reactions to another food, so they cut that out and feel better and on
and on.
And what happens is when you cut foods out completely for extended
periods of time, you lose all the gut bacteria and even enzyme
production, to some extent, you had to be able to digest those foods in
the first place. So it’s much harder to reincorporate them if this is a cycle
you’ve been going through for years.
So to us, complete healing means healing the gut and being able to
eat all the foods we’re supposed to be able to eat. In some cases, from
our understanding, there can be a genetic predisposition to gluten
intolerance. So no matter how much gut healing you do, eating gluten
just isn’t going to be in the cards for you.
And that could very well be a root cause on that note and something
you’d want to work with a practitioner on in tracking down. But other
than that, food freedom is what we have in mind for Rocky, and it’s what
we want for you as well.
Teddy: So what that’s looked like for us is, yes, cutting out a lot of the
well-known problem foods, gluten, soy, nightshades, eggs, dairy, grains,
nuts, legumes, corn, which can be found in a lot of prepared foods if
you’re not careful. We’ve also found yeast to be a problem. And that
can sneak up in a lot of sauces and herb blends. Fermented foods like
sauerkraut and kombucha ironically are higher in histamines.
So we were taking it easy on those, even though they are, of course,
typically very healing, but also not driving ourselves insane trying to
avoid absolutely anything that could even possibly be a problem. And
focusing instead on flooding him with what we know is going to heal his
gut and do a whole lot to control the inflammation inside and out in the
meantime.
And even with the well-known problem foods, being even quick to re-
introduce them, knowing that we don’t want this to be a lifelong thing.
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We’ve already been bringing back some legumes, nightshades, nuts,
grains, and fermented foods. And he seems to be doing great with them.
Ryan: We should also mention we will be doing more of a formal food
sensitivity testing with Rocky at some point pretty soon. And you’re
certainly going to hear about this more in the expert presentations.
But in working with Dr. Sheila, who you heard from in day one, and
you will also hear from in the advanced strategy section, with a gut as
messed up as Rocky’s, it would basically just show he’s sensitive to pretty
much everything and would really just cause more stress than anything.
As far as what Rocky has been going big on while we cut out a lot of the
potentially sensitive stuff, things that are both anti-inflammatory and
nutrient-rich, some of the big ones have been again, sweet potatoes,
berries, and lots of fruits of all kinds really, olives and olive oil. He can
eat a whole jar of olives if you let him. It’s pretty cute.
Grains of all kinds. We’ll steam or pressure cook a lot of dark leafy
greens and give him that covered in olive oil. Avocados, again, he’ll
eat avocados as long as you let him. We’ve been calling him our little
Mediterranean man with his love of healthy plant fats.
We’ll give him a scoop of coconut oil here and there, speaking of healthy
fats. Broccoli, beets, carrots, again, we’ll steam all those for him, and
they just slide right down, and we try to add as much garlic and ginger as
we can to everything, both anti-inflammatory and antipathogenic.
Teddy: And it’s probably also worth noting that we just talked about the
most well-known problem foods in terms of what people going through
something like this are likely sensitive to, but things no one should be
eating much, if ever. Well, we probably shouldn’t be leaving those out
either.
Processed or cured meat, high fructose corn syrup, or really any refined
sugar of any kind, refined carbohydrates, flours essentially. This isn’t
hard and bust for us. We’ll have a bit of properly fermented sourdough
bread, or maybe make some gluten-free muffins loaded up with lots of
good stuff like flax and whatnot.
[10:00]
But certainly, no reason to be eating anything like that when you’re
trying to heal from something major like this. Trans fat, which comes
from low-quality vegetable oils and are what most restaurant food is
fried in, there’s just no reason to go there with all of that.
Ryan: And we shouldn’t just gloss over gut healing as well, as that’s
the ultimate goal here. We’ve definitely got that covered in the expert
presentations, and there is no end to the amount of gut-healing
information you can find online these days. So for our contribution to
this eczema class, we wanted to keep it two things we’ve learned in
dealing with eczema specifically and let you hear about gut healing from
all the amazing people who specialize in just that.
We will show you some of our favorite gut-healing products, however,
and that probably makes this a good time to start talking about
supplements. And here again, we’re not the experts on supplements.
The experts are the experts on supplements. And you’ll hear a lot about
them in the supporting presentations and advanced content.
And the thing with supplements is, as most practitioners will tell you
when we’re talking about healing from something specific like eczema,
that’s going to look different for each person depending on what their
conditions are, what their body needs more of, and so on.
Teddy: So what we thought we’d do is show you what Dr. Sheila has
recommended specifically for Rocky to give you a look at what some of
his plan consists of and a few of our other favorite products.
In doing so, talk a bit about how we look at supplements in general, not
to say this is what you should be doing, but just to give you some idea
of what to be looking further into and keeping in mind as you watch the
expert presentations and hopefully work with a practitioner for yourself.
Ryan: Supplements, so you can go in a million different directions
with supplements and talk about the need for supplements on all
levels, be it general nutrition and vitamins and minerals, and it’s all-
important. And again, we’re definitely not the experts when it comes to
supplementation. So we’re trying really hard not to turn this into a little
supplement masterclass in and of itself.
And again, just to give you an idea of some of the primary things that Dr.
Sheila has recommended for Rocky. And then we’ve done our best to
kind of categorize them. And then also threw in just a few things that we
like in those categories in the spirit of rotation and not just staying on
the same thing all the time.
So again, this is by no means meant to be some sort of comprehensive
this is every supplement you need to take for eczema kind of deal. Just
to give you some ideas, again, just to show you what we’ve been going
through, literally, this is what got recommended for us. Some of the
main things that got recommended for us and just a few related things
that we like to talk about as well. So that being said, I suppose we can
start with histamine-type stuff.
Teddy: Yeah. I mean, these are some of the things that were
recommended specifically for Rocky’s case to control his histamine
levels. And included here, we have glycine powder, liposomal vitamin C,
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quercetin, and I should mention too because you might be wondering
how Rocky actually takes all of these.
And what we use is what we used for Ryder seven years ago. Now he
takes all of his supplements like a big boy, even though he’s almost
eight. He’s great at that. But for Rocky, we have a glass syringe and a
little glass spice jar, which we pour all of the supplements to mix it with
water, shake it up, draw it out with a glass syringe and then give it to him
orally.
Typically, if he doesn’t like the taste, he might turn his head away for the
first one. But then, after that, he’s pretty good about taking the rest of
his supplements.
Ryan: So next, I would kind of call these healthy fats. So when we think
about rebuilding the cells, rebuilding cell walls-- again, your skin, it’s in
kind of constant battle. Skin cells just dying off right and left. You’re just
regenerating it all the time. So cellular health and healthy fats and that
sort of thing are just kind of a key component to that.
And Dr. Sheila is big on this BodyBio phospholipid complex. So yeah,
I mean, this is just literally what your cell walls are made out of. Are
these phospholipids put into supplement form—pretty cool. And then
also when we think about healthy fats, we love just seed oils in general.
We really like this 5 Seed blend from Activation Products. Lots of good
omegas and then that sort of thing in there. It’s a mix of sunflower,
pumpkin, flax, black Sesame, and coriander.
So again, just really flooding the body with as much healthy fat as you
can, especially concentrated sources like this. I mean, that’s been a really
big deal to us even going back to cancer because, again, I mean, it’s a
cellular thing. So having healthy cells is a really big deal.
Teddy: So the next category that Dr. Sheila has Rocky on right now is
really kind of that overall immune-building category here. We did do
a very extensive lab draw. So we were able to see specifically what he
needed to build up his immune system. One of the things that we found
was that he was very low in zinc. So this is a nice easy zinc that he takes
orally by MaryRuth’s.
Ryan: And actually, it’s got a nice glycine base. And so when we mix it in
with all the other supplements, it’s kind of sweeter. So it actually makes
everything else taste not as bad, kind of.
And this one is the Mega IgG2000, Microbiome Labs. It’s a colostrum
product with some other good stuff in there as well, but colostrum is
known for its immune enhancement properties at the end of the day.
So this has got a few different forms of colostrum in there. It just kind
of makes it a more well-rounded product. But I mean, again, every
supplement has various health benefits, but I’d say the thing that
colostrum is most known for is just its immune-modulating benefits.
Teddy: Yeah. So the primary ingredient in both of these supplements
are sulforaphane. And this Calibrate product we’ve used for years for
Ryder. Again, it’s the sulforaphane in it that most attracted us to this
product, but it is an all-over immune-boosting supplement. So it’s
got a ton of other amazing things in it as well, including spirulina and
juice blends and different probiotics. So this is a really great overall
supplement.
For Rocky, the goal was more of a targeted isolated sulforaphane
supplement. So we have him on BrocElite, and this one is also great. It’s
just a sulforaphane. And the Calibrate we were also avoiding yeast for
some time with the eczema. And we’re not sure if that’s a trigger. It was
just one of the foods that we did cut out right away.
So at some point, we will introduce this product to him for sure because
we do think it is a great all-around immune-boosting product. But for
now, having the isolated products and then just making sure that they’re
agreeing with him, that he’s not having any negative side effects, is just
really important as he’s going through this whole healing process.
Okay. So the last kind of category that we’ve organized his supplements
into is really gut-healing focused. This Oxy-Powder, we have used this
product for years just to help--
Ryan: It keep things moving.
Teddy: It helps keep things moving. If you get backed up, this product
is extremely effective in getting the bad stuff out. It’s an ozonated
magnesium product. It’s safe for kids. It’s just a good all-around product
that’s very effective.
Ryan: When we talk about keeping things moving, this has come up
so often in our world, be it people going through cancer and dealing
with conventional treatment and getting backed up or going through
something like eczema because of gut issues. And so they’re backed up
from that anyway.
Yeah. We just always like to encourage people to find an all-natural
solution such as Oxy-Powder or maybe an herbal product, but this really
is the best one we found as opposed to something more conventional.
We see people on MiraLAX a lot. There is a-- what is it? Polyethylene
glycol in MiraLAX basically breaks down to the same chemical found in
antifreeze.
And there’s even a lot of research out there on linking that to mental
episodes, problems, disorders, that sort of thing. And kids, especially
we’re pretty big on children’s health. So we always like to throw that out
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there and really emphasize it whenever we can that there are all-natural,
completely healthy cleansing.
[20:00]
This is the natural oxygen-based cleanser that will go in. And not only
just keep things moving, but clean your gut at the same time. So sorry to
hound on that. But it’s a really big deal to us.
Teddy: Yeah. And I mean, we did have to use magnesium-based
products to keep Rocky regular in the beginning of this whole gut
healing journey with Dr. Sheila. Because when we first started seeing
her back in January of 2021, he was extremely constipated. We were not
getting daily bowel movements.
So now I’m happy to report that he is regular. All of the good stuff that
we’re pumping into him is working. Even his skin color, it used to be
almost gray. Now he glows like a healthy little boy. So it is amazing. This
stuff really does work.
Ryan: And we should highlight that we don’t actually have it on the
table, but we talked about ozonated magnesium because it’ll clean you
out, but just in terms of keeping you regular, Dr. Sheila did put us on just
a regular magnesium product.
Teddy: Until he got regular on his own.
Ryan: Yeah.
Teddy: Next, we have a specific probiotic strain that Dr. Sheila
recommended for Rocky. This is the Plantadophilus. He’s been on that
one as well as these Kids Digest enzymes, which he takes with every
meal to help him actually absorb the good nutrients from his food.
Because that was one thing that we did see in his stool study was that
he had an extremely high-fat content in his stool, which meant that
he wasn’t actually absorbing any of his nutrients. So the enzymes and
the probiotics work together to help him actually break down those
nutrients and keep the good nutrients inside of his body.
Ryan: Last or kind of rounding out here, this is ION*Gut Health. Most
people know it as Restore, formerly Restore. We’re big on this product all
around when it comes to not only gut healing but also protection from
toxicants in food. We’re 100% organic diet, but sadly we’re quite sure
some pesticides are still making their way in there.
So it’s a good overall again, gut healing products, not only in restoring
the tight junctions of the gut but also making sure that further damage
isn’t done. And when we talk about restoring the gut, here’s our friend
aloe. Again, not only good for soothing your skin but also really well
known for gut healing as well. We’ve been on this for a long time for just
general gut health.
If you talk to any cancer practitioner, they all know the healing power
of aloe for the gut, and it’s got a ton of good nutrients, overall wellness.
There’s a lot of crossover with all these things. It’s hard to just say this
supplement is only good for this, and this is only good for that, but lots
of good stuff.
One more time, again, under no condition is this to be considered a
comprehensive supplement analysis of everything you could possibly
do to supplement your way to good health on top of everything else you
need to do to get to good health.
But again, just wanted to show you some of the things that Dr. Sheila
was really keen on getting Rocky on. And then just some of our favorite
things along those lines when we’re talking about it just again, for the
sake of rotation categories, that sort of thing. So that’s about it for
supplements.
Well, we hope that gave you some good ideas on what to be looking into
for yourself. What we take as an overall family is a lot more extensive
than that, depending on who it is or what exactly the purpose is. And
again, we’ve talked a lot about with other products. There’s a lot of
rotation involved.
We categorize things, and then we find the best products in each
category and rotate between those. So if you want to see more of that,
of course, you can look at our website. But again, when we’re talking
about eczema and skin condition specifically, hopefully, this was a
helpful start. And again, please watch all of the supporting presentations
for a lot more on this.
Teddy: And I think that about wraps it up. And parting, we just want to
leave you with the notion that when it comes to healing, if you’ve spent
any time researching holistic healing, I think a lot of us have been sort of
trained to have our minds immediately go to food and supplements. But
as you’ve seen over the past six days, there’s a whole lot more to it than
that.
And particularly, in eczema, a lot of it, it’s much more straightforward
than all of the nuances we just talked about here. And that’s why
we saved it for the second to last lesson. Aside from working with a
practitioner to find the internal root cause, this is going to be the most
personalized. But it absolutely should not be what you get hung up
on and feel like you’re never going to heal unless you figure it all out
exactly.
Because in all honesty, I don’t know if anyone has food and supplements
figured out 100% for anything. Yeah. A whole lot of people do heal all
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the same. With that, we’ll see you back here for lesson seven: Advanced
Strategies and Protocols, which is actually going to be a little different for
our portion.
Ryan and Dr. Sheila are going to be talking about everything above and
beyond what we’ve done in Rocky’s case, as it was so severe, which
did involve some prescriptions to get things under control, which we
certainly weren’t excited about, but we can’t argue with the results.
Like we said, in the very beginning, holistic to us means looking at the
whole picture and all options on the table and realizing there’s a time
and a place for everything. But again, we really hope that these first six
days has broken things down in a way you feel like you can handle and
wrap your mind around.
It’s been really rewarding for us getting to put this together. Use these
categories and systems we’ve talked about, really make sure you’re
diving into each of them hard upfront. And we can confidently say you’ll
be on the road to clear skin a whole lot sooner than you ever thought
possible if you do.
FOOD TRIGGERS AND
SUPPLEMENTS
Dr. Zielinski: Hello, and welcome to Lesson Six, Food Triggers and
Supplements. And welcome to the Mama Z show. In just a few minutes,
Mama Z is going to show you exactly how to transform your diet into an
inflammation-soothing, skin-healing powerhouse.
Specifically, in this lesson you’re going to learn how easy it is to avoid

the most common skin disease and food triggers, how to make gluten-
free, dairy-free, and sugar-free food that is not free of flavor. And Mama
Z will walk you through the most common budget-friendly ingredient
substitutions so you can transform your favorite recipes into allergy-
friendly, skin-soothing delicacies.
Seriously, y’all, Mama Z is a master at this stuff, and I can testify that we
don’t live on rice cakes and kale chips. We eat what we love and we love
what we eat. And we want to show you exactly how to prevent skin flare-
ups with your diet. Ready to go? Me too.
Avoiding the Most Common Food Triggers
So, we decided to combine food and supplements in this lesson for a

few reasons. They complement each other wonderfully, and we have
found that eating an anti-inflammatory diet while taking the right
supplements is a wonderful one-two punch to help prevent skin flare-
ups.
It is also a key component to treating eczema, psoriasis, and skin

disease at the root cause. Now, if you’re looking for information about
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supplements specifically, I’ll refer you to the other videos featured in this
lesson. Admittedly, we are not supplement experts.
Sure, we know a thing or two about essential oils, and we have a pretty
good understanding of how to use supplements to enjoy an abundant
life. But when it comes to taking targeted supplements to specifically
manage eczema, psoriasis, and skin disease, we’ll leave it to the gurus.
But when it comes to food, that’s our jam--pun intended. We have spent
nearly 20 years perfecting the art and science of allergy-friendly cooking,
and at the core is how to successfully avoid gluten, dairy, and sugar
products. Trust me, it’s a lot easier than you may think.
And, admittedly, we have thrown away a lot of bread loaves over the
years because they came out of the oven like a hockey puck. Our kids
have been our professional taste-testers, and you know kids. They don’t
lie when it comes to food, and you can’t make a toddler or a young child
eat something that tastes nasty if you’re life depended on it. Ultimately,
that means that the information you’ll learn in this video is officially kid
tested, mom perfected, and doctor approved.
As a reminder of what you’ve learned in previous lessons, if you want to

enjoy an abundant life free of eczema, psoriasis, and skin disorders, you
need to cut out food triggers immediately. Now, there are a number of
potential triggers, and it’ll take some trial and error to find all of those
that specifically affect you and your family, but everyone agrees that the
primary three are gluten, dairy, and sugar.
These also so happen to be the mainstay for most diets in America and
other developed countries, which really isn’t surprising, because the
countries that eat these foods the most are those that suffer from skin
disease the worst. Because of their autoimmune component, you’ll find
that once you treat eczema and psoriasis naturally with food, you’ll also
start to feel better in other areas of your body.
Pain vanishes. Libido is restored. Gut issues are resolved. Brain fog
disappears. And the list goes on and on. Eating an anti-inflammatory
diet is absolutely essential to enjoying the abundant life, and our hope
and prayer is that you find it as enjoyable as we have over the years.
That’s why I’m super excited to hand the baton off to my lovely wife, who
has literally spent thousands of hours in the kitchen perfecting the art
and science of allergy-friendly cooking on a budget.
But before we do, be sure to take out Mama Z’s recipe makeover
and ingredient substitution guide. You were given a copy when you
registered for this course, and it looks like this. This guide, and all the
charts listed and tips, have been our lifeline over the years to eating
gluten free, dairy free, sugar free, but not free-of-flavor food.
You’ll want to print it out, and I would recommend getting it laminated,

because you’ll want it handy for a long time. Well, that’s it. That’s a wrap.
So, without further ado, here’s Mama Z.
Mama Z’s Recipe Makeover
Sabrina: When you’re looking for the triggers of eczema, psoriasis, and
chronic conditions like diabetes, obesity, cancer, you really want to avoid
the inflammatory ingredients that might be in your pantry and in your
kitchen. Some of those include dairy, sugar, and gluten. And we’re going
to talk about that today in my recipe makeover.
I want to start with some of my tips first, because when you’re learning
how to change out your pantry and your kitchen into a much safer
environment, there’s a few things you need to know about doing that.
So, first of all, when we talk about gluten free, when we make our own
bread, we need to not put it on a time frame. I’ll never forget the very
first time I decided to make gluten-free bread in my bread machine and
thought it would do everything that a normal loaf of bread did, and it
came out one inch tall.
And I was making stuffing for Thanksgiving, and I remember thinking,

well, this is the only recipe I have. So I ended up having to make seven
loaves of bread to make one recipe of stuffing for Thanksgiving. So
I learned earlier on that even though that was probably the highest
calorie dressing I ever made, that we can’t always have things work
the same way. We have to make changes according to our recipes and
according to our ingredients.
Another thing is, is that when you’re dealing with fresh herbs, you have
to remember that one tablespoon of fresh equals a teaspoon of dried.
And if you decide to use essential oils in your recipes, one to three drops
generally are all the same equivalent. So, a tablespoon of fresh herbs
equals a teaspoon of dried herbs, equals one to three drops of essential
oils, depending on your recipe.
Also, one of the tricks to using special non-processed sugars is to add

vanilla extract to each of those recipes. A lot of times baked goods will
require one teaspoon of vanilla extract. When using a natural sugar, it
has other flavor of its own, and to help it taste more like what you’re
used to, you want to bump that up to a tablespoon of vanilla extract,
and that will really help the overall flavor.
Also, another tip is to make two times and three times your recipes,
and then freeze them. So, for us and for our family, we typically do a
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breakfast night on Monday. We do salmon or tuna on Tuesday. We do
an Italian theme on Wednesday. We do more of a Mexican theme on
Thursday.
And then we have a variety of different things that we do each week,

and some weeks you won’t need to tap into your freezer because you
have extra time to make things. And other weeks, you’ll be rushing. So
what I like to do, whether you are single or you have a large family like
we do, making multiple portions and then freezing them out based on
what your particular needs are, is going to help you overall, especially
for meal planning.
And even though we have a very set schedule, we have a lot of versatility
in that. We do a lot of different things each and every week, so when we
have the extra time to make extra and then freeze them, then we’re able
to put that into play.
Now, we of course have a leftovers night, but you wouldn’t always have
to use that. If it’s harder for your meal planning and prep, you could
always utilize what is left over from dinner for your next day’s lunch. So
we do a lot of that here in our household.
But I want to start with what are some of the no-no’s, the no-no’s list?
We know, of course, that there’s gluten, and we’re going to talk about
that more specifically first. There’s dairy--and we’re going to go into
that in depth--and also processed sugar and sugars, and what are the
differences between your table sugar and the other natural sugars. But
also, there’s a complete no-no’s list, as well, and we’re going to go over
that.
The No-No Allergy list: artificial flavoring and coloring, casein and
pasteurized dairy. Farm-raised fish and meat. Gluten containing
products, like bread, condiments, sauces, et cetera. GMO corn and
conventional non-organic grains.
[10:00]
Preservatives: MSG, nitrates, sulfites, et cetera. Alternative sugars:

Aspartame, Splenda, Truvia, et cetera. Refined processed sugars, like
corn syrup, evaporated cane sugar, maltodextrin, et cetera. Refined
hydrogenated oils like margarine, vegetable oil, et cetera. White table
salt and artificial seasoning.
Pantry and Gluten Makeover Guide
We are going to dive into the gluten-free section, and we’re going to
start out with a big one: bread. So a lot of the bread that’s gluten free
on the market isn’t very good. There are certain ones that are better
than others. So we’re going to talk a little bit about that. But especially
for us, because we have a lot of children and some of them like to have
sandwiches, you want to have a decent option for people. And you may
or may not have time to make your own bread.
So one of the ones that’s on the market is called Simple Kneads. And
they have a variety of different ones. This is one that I found at Whole
Foods. Now, a lot of times, we use our local health food store, and you
probably have one in your area that could have any one of these brands.
This particular one I found at Whole Foods, and I like it because the
sourdough that’s in there, everything is naturally derived. And you want
to look for that.
You want to follow not just that it has sugar on the carbohydrates. We
want to go by ingredients alone, and not ignoring that, almost have your
blinders on when you look at that and look at the actual ingredients.
What I’m saying is, is that all of the breads that you see that say “gluten
free,” you always need to read further.
Some of the other ones on the market that are not my favorite are Udi’s.
That has white processed sugar in it. So some of these things are a little
bit different. I also like the Sami’s. The Sami’s bread, and it comes in a
variety of different kinds. It is a great alternative as well.
But then, let’s say you wanted to make any kind of soft taco. La Tortilla
Factory has a teff gluten-free wrap, but then there’s others that have an
organic brown rice wrap. Now, people say, “Is this anything like what I’m
used to?” Yes and no. There are certain wraps that will fall apart. This
particular one is a very good, more sturdy wrap.
You’re still going to have…some of that is going to break apart, so you

want to make sure that when you’re deciding what you’re going to make
that you grab the right type of wrap. And we’ve used all different kinds,
and they have a lot of different ones on the market that are made with
quinoa, with almond flour. And they’re very good selections, but you
need to try each one with what you’re making to find out if it indeed is
the right one for you. I found the most versatility in this particular wrap.
Let’s say you really want to make your own sushi rolls or veggie roll
wraps. And this is a great option with brown rice and cassava. It also has
green tea in it as well. So there are other options out there, and what I
found with these is really follow the directions. Some of them you have
to dip them in water and then roll them. But as far as rolling paper, this
is probably the best on the market. So this is a little bit about some of
the breads.
Now we’ve got bread crumbs, and I want to talk about that specifically,
because not all bread crumbs are also created equal. And I have
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found that there’s different ones on the market, again, that all have
sugar in them. So I found a couple that I really like. And I really like this
product, Hol Grain. And they have a lot of different things, from a gravy
thickener…and it’s just all brown rice and it’s milled at different levels.
This one is probably the closest that I’ve found to regular bread crumbs,
and it’s also a gluten-free product. This is a lot chunkier, so this looks like
a traditional bread flakes that you would do. And my mom, basically all
the bread crumbs that we had when we made our own bread--and we
made our own bread for years--she would take and purposely blend up
bread to make our own bread crumbs and then put them in the freezer.
You can completely do that.
If you are into making your own bread and you have the healthy recipes
that you use, you can always blend that up and make your own bread
crumbs. This is about as close as you’ll get to that.
Now not all stores carry these things, so sometimes you have to look for
these things online as well. But our local health food store does carry
them, and we are very blessed.
Okay, chocolate. Chocolate’s a big one. There are so many people that
crave chocolate, and there are certain chocolates that are better than
another. I really like the Lily’s brand of chocolate and their baking bars.
This is very similar to what you would use. I love the brand. I like the
ingredients.
And they have other ones, like this Lakanto. The problem is that certain
brands with more erythritol or other things, or monk fruit, may or may
not affect your digestive system, and you kind of have to tell. Dr. Z
doesn’t do as good on that one, but he does great with the Lily’s.
This is another one that I found at the health food store, and this is
literally just organic cacao. That’s it. There’s nothing else in there, and
they are completely sugar free and unsweetened. So you have a few
options when it comes to baking.
And, of course, also your cacao powder as well. So anywhere where it

calls for chocolate powder, you want to use the organic cacao powder in
its place. And you can use this also instead of baking squares as well. All
right.
So we want to go on to our coffee. So some people do enjoy a cup of

coffee, but one of the biggest things to think about is a lot of the coffee
that we have on the market is very acidic, and depending on how it’s
dried, how it’s grown, you could have a lot more fungus. You’ll have a lot
more pesticides. So it’s really important that you know where you get
your coffee from.
There’s a few different places that we like, and Life Boost is an awesome
alternative. So we really like that one. So we want to look at what we’re
doing in our pantry and making it better. So when you are going to
choose a coffee, you could have a local grower or you could have your
local health food store that might also have some other supplies as well.
Now, confectioner’s sugar and the natural sugars, we’re going to go over
that in more depth. I have some of the things here and I also make my
own blends, and I’m going to teach you how to do that a little bit later.
One thing I want to note about that is that when we say sugar, you might
see where it says “date sugar.” That’s definitely not the same thing, and
also not the same color, as what you’d see in your processed sugar that
you’d find, your white processed sugar in your pantry, or in a normal,
traditional American pantry.
And that’s not what we use in any of our baked goods. So, I want to
talk a little bit more in depth on that, and I’m going to show you all the
different options and why I came up with my methods, but that’s also a
great place to start.
Another thing I want to talk about is condiments. So there’s a big

condiment conflict in the fact of certain ones still have bad ingredients.
So out of all of the ketchups that are on the market, I do like the
Organicville. That’s probably my favorite. I have tried a lot of the
different ketchups that are unsweetened and then have tried different
things in there, but I really overall like the balance of that. And especially
if you’re in a transitional phase of wanting to move to sweetening your
own ketchup, this is a great place to start, with the Organicville.
Another thing to think about is your pickles and your mustard. So

typically, what I will do is I will get a Dijon mustard and I will fill it about
two-thirds of the way full, and then one-third of the way with honey,
and make my own honey mustard. And I write on the container, “honey
mustard.” So I’m going to share that with you really quick. Right here.
The honey mustard is very good. And I’ll tell you, we had salmon last
week, wild-caught salmon, and it was amazing with this on top of it. But
you would never know the difference.
[20:00]
And all of the ones that I found on the market have sugar in them. So
just taking a Dijon mustard and doing two-thirds Dijon mustard, one-
third honey, is great.
Now, you can shake it up. I have found that it still is more separated, so
what I’ll do is I’ll actually take the Dijon mustard out and I’ll mix it myself,
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either in a food processor, a magic bullet, or in my blender, and then I’ll
pop it back in. And I use a funnel for that, because once I put it in there,
then gravity sets down in there and you don’t really have to worry about
it again.
And again, when you’re picking out your Dijon mustard even, look at
your ingredients. Always be reading your ingredients, not necessarily
those nutritional labels.
Okay. Corn starch. So there’s a lot of different things that you can use.
Arrowroot powder. Tapioca flour. Corn starch. I have found that there
are people that have allergies to arrowroot flour and tapioca starch, and
so even though I have some of those things here if you haven’t seen
them before, it really, really helps to test things out in small batches
when you start. That way, you can have other alternatives.
Now, I have found the most consistency for the organic corn starch,
and what I like to use these three in is I make my own confectioner’s
sugar. And, of course, it’s not “powdered sugar” powdered sugar. It’s my
version of that. And I’m going to teach you how to make that today.
So, you can use tapioca. You can use corn starch, and you can use
arrowroot powder as a thickener. There’s another one when you’re
cooking, especially making gravy, that you can use, which is that same
Hol Grain brand, and it’s a gravy and sauce thickener. I really like using
that. We eat a lot more plant based, but when we are cooking with meat
or if I’m making a gravy, that’s what I’m going to choose.
Next, I want to talk about powdered milk. So, at first, they had a bunch
of different brands of powdered milk, and then I started looking at the
ingredients, of course, and I was not happy about anything that I saw.
So I did find…and this is one of the ones they have on the market, and it
only has two ingredients--or three ingredients--and this one is a pretty
safe one. It’s by the Native Forest, and it’s coconut milk powder. This is
also another one that I found. And overall, it is very hard to find good
powdered milk.
Typically, I’m going to use a powdered milk when I make rolls for a
special occasion. So this one, you could also use as a vegan coffee
creamer, and, of course, you could always separate some of your nut
milk and make it much thicker and put much less water in when you do
a nut milk.
We make nut milk with what’s called an Almond Cow, and I used to
squeeze my nut milk through nut bags and actually make my own with
the blender, and then press it through and then have the final product.
You have what you press out, and then you have the nuts. And one thing
that I found is that per batch recipes, if you use a lot less water, it’s going
to be a lot more thick, and so then I will use that in replacement and
take a little less water out of a recipe.
But if you have to choose a powdered, these are about the best that are
on the market. Still not a hundred percent great, but these are a much
better alternative than anything else that you can find on the market,
and because you’re also wanting to eliminate dairy, it’s important that
you look at alternatives if you’re going to use that product.
Okay. Let’s also talk about pasta. Some people, it’s bread that’s a trigger.
Some people, it’s pasta, that that’s their comfort food or one thing
that they really like. So there is a lot of good products on the market
for pasta. I actually have a pasta class where we teach you all kinds of
different ways to make gluten-free Italian meals.
However, pasta that is gluten free is not necessarily the same as your
regular pasta. So I’m going to talk a little bit about the dry goods like this,
and ones that are in your freezer department. Both of these have good
ingredients. This is a brown rice base, and this is an almond flour base.
When you cook with gluten-free products, especially pastas, when it says
seven to ten minutes, it’s pretty much always seven minutes. And you
want to make sure that you salt your water and you use oil, because
when you put them in the water, it almost needs to coat each one of
those pieces of pasta individually so that you don’t end up having one
big hunk of pasta. And it can still happen, even for the best cook, so
make sure you stir often.
But be very gentle when you stir, because if you’re not and you’re used
to cooking with more traditional wheat products, those hold their shape
and form for a lot longer. When you do this over and over and over
again not as careful or with certain types of spoons that may have the
forks and other stuff with them, it will break it apart, and then you’ll end
up with just little pieces of pasta everywhere. Not always my favorite.
So make sure that you really, really care for your pasta, and then once
you take it out of the pot, you need to oil it again with a good, healthy
olive oil. And unfortunately, on the market there are so many fake olive
oils out there, so it’s important that you use good olive oil. I have a good
olive oil here. We use an olive oil club.
And the more research that we’ve done, we’ve found that it’s really
harder to trust a lot of the even organic olive oils that they have in
the market. Now, there are some good specialized stores that focus
on vinegar and olive oil, and you can get some very good quality
ingredients, but it is harder to find good quality olive oil. And my
husband, with his Italian background, he lived on bad olive oil forever
thinking that that was good until he had actual olive oil.
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And because of my mom and her culinary cooking, cooking with herbs,
we sell some of our goods at a very good Mediterranean market, and
earlier on I learned the difference between real balsamic vinegar and
fake, and real olive oil and fake, and there is a very big difference. So
making sure that you oil your pasta after you do with very good olive oil
is another big key.
Now when you’re using this kind of product--lasagna sheets--and

we make a lot of lasagna here. We do it with both eggplant, we do it
with zucchini, and we do it with the pasta. We do it both completely
vegetarian style and use spinach straight from the garden. We also do a
meat style as well. So you can get very creative with the things that you
do within your pastas, but this one would be a no-boil pasta, which is my
favorite kind of way to do your lasagna.
Now some of the lasagna noodles that are out there that are gluten
free…I’ve done every single thing the same. Layered it the same as your
traditional lasagna recipes say. But certain brands actually will split apart
and lift off of your container. So if you’re going to make it, you have to
bake it absolutely right then.
Now I find with this one, there’s a lot more versatility. You’re able to set it
up and you can bake it, you can freeze it like that and then bake it when
you’re really going to bake it. And you have a lot more versatility. With
the other ones that are dry, I have found it is much better if you cook
them right away, or even partially cook them, so that the pasta itself
doesn’t separate and come out of the pan.
Remember, because you’re working with gluten free, it’s a lot drier of
a pasta, so you’re going to need more liquid, and that liquid eventually
gets completely sucked up into what you’re doing. With one like this,
you would use just about the same. So when I make my sauce, I adjust
accordingly based on the type of noodles that I need.
This company also has an almond flour pizza that you can decorate with
your own toppings and all of that goodness, and then they have things
like gnocchi and sweet potato gnocchi, fettucine, spaghetti. They have a
lot of different ones. And, again, it’s all almond based. So I really do like
that one for a good option, and it tastes wonderful.
All right. So now we’re on to salt. All right. So not all salt is created equal.
And I want to talk a little bit about sea salt and some of the other good
alternatives
to salt.
[30:00]
So you’ll see ones that say in the store “iodized sea salt.” We try to
completely avoid that, and using one that says it does not have a supply
of iodine is the way to go. This is Costco. This is the health food store.
Both are good options in terms of table salt.
Now the best option is the pink Himalayan salt. I love that. Also the
Hawaiian red salt and the Celtic gray sea salt. We’ve done lots of
research--and even my mom’s company has--on salt, and those bar
none, even if you’re going for just the taste alone, are wonderful. And
they are a lot less “salty” as well, and a little bit goes a longer way.
So when you’re talking about utilizing salt in a recipe, it measures out

fourth of a tablespoon, fourth of a teaspoon, half a teaspoon, all the
same, but it’s a lot better for you and it’s a much higher quality salt.
When I’m just going to salt the water or I use it for other recipes, even
for some of our cleaning products, these are great.
And then, of course, if you’re bathing, using Epsom salts, then you
always want to make sure that you have one that you could actually
internally take as a laxative, because the other products a lot of times
will have adulterated essential oils in them. So you want to avoid those
because it’s going to be toxic to your body. Now, if you add your own
good quality essential oils to your bath, that’s great. Again, you’re always
going to want to use a carrier oil, as well, to dilute that there within the
water.
Okay. Now I want to talk about vinegar. I want to talk about white
distilled vinegar, herbal vinegar, and regular Bragg organic apple cider
vinegar. Not all apple cider vinegar is created equal, so if it just says
apple cider vinegar, that’s not the one that I choose.
I prefer the Bragg apple cider vinegar. You can see the mother in there.
That’s this dark stuff at the bottom. That’s culture. And it’s actually
wonderful. You want that in there, and you want the mother with the
extra acids and enzymes and all of that.
They make another product that is more detoxifying, and it has honey
and cayenne pepper. And I actually like to use that as my freshener for
my face. So there’s a few different options when it comes to Bragg apple
cider vinegar. I prefer that, like I said, over anything else. I’ve actually had
the mother grow in certain ones, and I love that. I think that’s wonderful.
We go through a lot of that, and that can be used, cup for cup, in any
recipe.
So, in all of my salad dressing recipes that I make, I’m either going to
use this or I’m going to use a high quality of vinegar. I mentioned that
before, that we have an olive oil and vinegar store, and I absolutely love
them. It’s very high quality. So I love to use a balsamic vinegar.
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And it’s really important to know where your vinegars and oils come
from, but when I’m talking about regular recipes I’m either going to go
for one of these or one from one of your oil and vinegar stores.
Now, white distilled vinegar. I only prefer organic white distilled vinegar
in my cleaning products. I do not prefer to ingest those. And I would
strongly encourage you to use what you have as far as in your cleaning
products, and anything else to throw away.
I really do like the glass bottle ones. And like this, of course, is in a glass
bottle, but there is some versatility with some of your natural cleaning
recipes. But truly, that’s all that I use with that.
Now, let’s say you wanted to make your own flavors of apple cider
vinegar. You can easily take a container and fill--stuffed full, like a one
quart-size container--stuffed full with herbs. And then you can pour over
this product, and then let it steep for two to three weeks. Make sure you
write the date on it, and then you filter it off in a coffee filter, and then
you have an herb-infused vinegar of your own.
So if there are certain things that you really like, certain tastes that you
really like, certain recipes that you’re trying to duplicate of things that
you had before that maybe had some other not-as-good options in
them, that’s a great way to start.
Also, liquid aminos. This is a great substitution for Worcestershire sauce,

for soy sauce, and even the gluten-free soy sauce, because that has a lot
of extra salt in it. And believe it or not, this does not have any salt. So I
prefer this Bragg aminos.
And this is one of the things that I take to the restaurant with me. I’ve got
my little go-bag for the restaurant. I have my healthy olive oil, vinegar,
stevia, and my liquid aminos. And I bring that with me everywhere.
That travels. We have what’s called a food suitcase, where we have our
staples that we bring with us, and I have a list of things that I always
double check. Are they going to be able to have those things there, can
we pick them up, or do I need to bring them myself.
So I encourage you to start writing down a list as you start transitioning
out your pantry, but things that are harder to find. I’ll never forget when
we first started making a lot of transitions into our pantry, I carried little
crates with me of stuff. And pretty much it looked like I was moving in
everywhere I went.
Well, I was able to downsize a lot of that because people are very open
now to a lot more alternative ways of eating. And this is for your health,
and this is for what those non-organic, inflammatory ingredients will
do to your body. So, yes, your body shows an allergic reaction by how
it responds to those inflammatory ingredients. So it’s really important
to make sure that you have the tools that you need, and it is imperative
when you travel places.
One of the other things that I also recommend is when you are traveling
somewhere, if you’re going to eat out, that you always call in advance.
You either check to see what the recipes have in them ingredient-wise...
you talk to either a chef or you try to get a copy of what they have for a
menu. And many times, this is all done behind the scenes. I want to be
as maintenance-free as I possibly can when I get to a place. I will do the
calling before I get there.
So if I go to a wedding or a special event, I’m going to call and say I do

have food sensitivities. I’m going to give them the list. And then we’re
going to go over them. So typically, what I’ll have is I will have a dry salad,
and then we’ll figure out what we’re going to do for the main dish, and
I don’t do any of the seasonings or toppings on it, because all of them
typically have things you can’t have. So I utilize my olive oil and my
vinegar for those.
And then I’ll get dry vegetables that are steamed, and then I add…I have
one other seasoning that I like to put on there, and that’s herbes de
Provence, which is a blend. And you can usually find that at your health
food store. But if you have your own favorite blend of herbs, you can
add that to your little go-package and utilize that also at a place that
you’re going to be eating.
And then I always work out those type of things prior to going anywhere.
That way, it doesn’t take anything away from the dinner and you’re not
calling attention to yourself, especially if you’re eating differently. But
nowadays, it’s so much easier than 15, 20 years ago, in calling ahead,
because they’re more used to that. And even for a wedding, a lot of
times they have allotments for people that have restrictions already
built into the price for the people that are paying for you to go to their
wedding and et cetera.
So just always call ahead, and then when I get somewhere, I ask who do
I need to check in with, and I check in with them. And then they make
a notation, usually at my table, or they’ll watch, and then that way it
doesn’t call any extra attention to yourself.
Okay. So we have a few other things here we haven’t talked about. And
we haven’t talked about flour. Flour is a biggie, especially if you’re used
to wheat flour or enriched flour, or other kinds of pastry flour. The one
that I’ve found that is the most versatile is the Bob’s Red Mill. The 1-to-1
Baking Flour is a great one. Also, there is another Bob’s Red Mill one, and
that’s a really good one too. The only thing for me is it’s all based with
beans. So that bothers my digestive system. So you want to see which
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one works best for you.
[40:00]
There’s a Pamela’s brand of gluten-free flour. The Trader Joe’s brand

of gluten-free flour is wonderful. Typically with that one I will even put
four or five bags of the Trader Joe’s and one bag of the organic coconut
flour and make my own baking flour. So I’ll definitely do it based on the
recipe, but there are lots of bad gluten-free flours out there as well. So
just make sure you read the ingredients. Make sure it doesn’t have dairy
in it and some of the other things we’re trying to avoid.
We haven’t also talked about oats. Oats has its own gluten. Oat gluten
is just a little bit different and it is airborne as well, so you want to make
sure when you’re picking oats…I like to make sure that they are gluten-
free, they are sprouted, and organic. And that is the best kind to get.
This is my favorite. You can get these at your local health food store.
And also, tapioca. I remember my dad always loving tapioca pudding

when we would make that. You want to go back to some of the basics,
some of the things that maybe you forgot that you used to make, or
your family used to make, that you haven’t made in quite a long time.
This is one of those treasures.
So dipping back into some of those older things will not only just bring
the past back, but you’re going to have a wonderful treat, and you
can sweeten it with nature’s goodness. And we’ll use just a little bit of
coconut sugar and some maple syrup, and we make this wonderful
recipe.
One other thing we’re going to talk about is egg replacer. I like to use egg
replacer, whether I’m making my own ice cream or I use it in recipes, or
a lot of times if I’m going to make a vegetarian option, a vegan option,
usually the only thing that’s different is that I have eggs in there. So I’ll
utilize the egg replacer. And you use two tablespoons of water--purified
water--to one-half a tablespoon of the egg replacer.
What I ended up doing is searching out all these products, finding good
alternatives to the things that I used, and then made adaptions within
my schedule of how I use them to cook, took notes on my recipes,
and then once I knew that they were good, then I made an official
substitution. And that’s why this recipe makeover is so important.
Now, you’re going to have other things that you use when you cook,
and other favorite recipes. So I want you to be able to go back to your
recipes and take some of the things that we’ve talked about today and
make those transitions for you and your family.
Not only are you going to feel better, it’ll help your skin, it’ll help other
chronic disease conditions, but you’re also going to make good, life-
giving food that you don’t have to worry about the ingredients that are
in them. And you’re going to feel a lot better too.
Refrigerator and Dairy Makeover Guide
Welcome to the dairy section of our recipe makeover. So, we’re going
to head towards the refrigerator and see what kind of things we have
in there as well. And I’m also going to touch on meat, and I’m going to
touch on cultured veggies as well. There are a lot of substitutions and
things that we do in this place. And also, at the end I’m going to talk
about our produce and our “Clean Fifteen” and the “Dirty dozen,” and
the things to watch out for.
All right. This is going to dive in deep. We have lots of fun things here.
So I want to just jump right in. Okay. I’m going to first talk about butter.
So we have both the grass-fed and we also have sea-salted or regular
organic butter. And then we also have your coconut oil. And we like the
organic coconut oil.
I have a few different options, because one of the things you need
to look out for is if you are substituting out those salts and the other
things for sea salt and whatnot, you’re really going to want to look for
the ingredients that are in your butter. We like the Kerrygold butter, but
there are also some other good alternatives as well. So definitely check.
Every grocery store has these options these days, and that’s why even
from the last time I wrote my pantry makeover there are so many
different options that we didn’t even have a few years ago, not to
mention 15 or 20 years ago.
So, cheese. Cheese is another issue where you have to try a lot of
different varieties, and certain brands work better for other things.
Especially because we’re doing non-dairy, some of the cheeses on the
market are good, and some are not good.
Now, the Daiya cheese. We really like the Daiya cheese, and we like
the original Daiya cheese. They have a cutting board one, and the
ingredients aren’t as good. It melts even better, but I, honestly, and the
kids will tell you, this isn’t the right cheese. They know what the cheeses
taste like. They know the consistency. They know what they like. And
these are wonderful cheeses.
You can always see what your grocery store offers, and between your
local health food store and the other stores that you shop, whether it be
Publix, Ralphs, Kroger, or many other options, including Whole Foods or
whatever, you’re going to have different varieties of non-dairy cheese.
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Another brand is the Violife brand, and they also have shreds as well. A
lot of them are coconut-oil based. They’re plant-based cheeses. This is
wonderful. I make a marinated feta cheese, and this is the one that I use.
It’s great.
Also, you have your block cheeses, and there is the jalapeno Havarti
style, the smoked gouda, the jack style, cheddar. And I’ve used these in a
variety of recipes, and they’re all wonderful.
Then you get into your slices as well. So the Follow Your Heart brand,
and also the Daiya brand, has good, sliced non-dairy cheese. It took me
a while to find the best cheeses for the job. And each brand--because
some of them do have slices, some of them do have shreds, some of
them do have block style of the cheese--you really need to see what
you’re making. And when I make recipes, I actually indicate each thing,
because some things are better for other things.
Now, when it comes to a mozzarella ball, we love the tomato salad that
has the fresh mozzarella cheese. But when you can’t have dairy or you
don’t want to have dairy because of the inflammatory properties of it,
one of the great options is this Miyoko’s brand cheese. Now they also
have another one that is the smoked variety, and that’s cultured, of
course. But I really like this one.
And I talked to a cheese expert, and I asked him what’s the secret of
cutting cheese. And he actually said something profound. He said any
of these block-style cheeses, the non-dairy cheeses included, if you put
them in the freezer for 10 minutes before you cut them and then use a
cheese-cutting knife, which looks a little bit different…and then, he said
when you bring it out it’ll cut perfectly every single time. Boy, was he
right. Completely correct. So we do that all the time.
Now, you do have a few other options with the parmesan. Now some
people will still do an aged parmesan, and those can be very costly. I
make my own vegan parmesan. And then this is also a good option from
the Follow Your Heart brand or the Violife, where you actually shred
it yourself. Both of these are great options as well, and we have many
recipes that we use for each of those.
Now, one of the other things that people always ask me is, “What about
sour cream? What about cream cheese?” And I have tried all of them.
There are some good options out there. So I really like the Kite Hill,
which is an almond-based cream cheese. Love that. There are a few
other varieties that make a good cream cheese, especially because
we make a lot of dips. So I’ll use a few of these different products
sometimes even together to make that.
Now, the sour cream, up until a couple years ago, they didn’t really
have this in a dairy-free product. But both the Kite Hill and the Follow
Your Heart has a great sour cream, so a lot of times I’ll mix it with
my homemade taco seasoning and make a taco dip with it, and it’s
wonderful. It really is.
[50:00]
Now, before that time, I would instead use Vegenaise as an alternative.

So if you live in a smaller area, you might not have as much access to
certain things or you have to drive a long way to find things, you may be
able to find these things. But if not, you could always use the Vegenaise.
I used it in that place for years, and it worked wonderful.
The thing that has been a staple in our house has been our yogurt.
Each of us has different needs. We have different recipes that we use
for different things. So the unsweetened vanilla coconut milk yogurt is
wonderful. We use this with the kids. We end up using a few drops of
stevia, a few drops of lemon essential oil, and the kids love it. So this is a
staple for lunches at our house.
And then the unsweetened one--unsweetened and it is completely plain-

-we use this in place of ricotta cheese in our lasagna. We also use this
in other dip recipes and many other places where it calls for yogurt or
even for sour cream. Again, you can use that. I’ve even used it in a few
different cake recipes, and it is also great.
So, Dr. Z’s favorite is the Kite Hill one. This is definitely a Greek style.
The other one is more of a regular style. This is a thicker alternative.
So anywhere that it calls for Greek yogurt, you have your unsweetened
vanilla, and you have your plain unsweetened as well.
Now, the Kite Hill brand does make a ricotta cheese, and so any other
recipe besides lasagna I would completely recommend using this in, but
it is much drier. So if you put it in with your lasagna, when it bakes with
the eggs or egg replacer in that recipe, it ends up getting much more
chunky, where having a thinner product like this bakes up much more
like what you would expect in a lasagna. So that’s really my preference.
I’ve tried over and over again.
Now, I have used this to make homemade ravioli. I have used this in
other recipes, like a stuffed shell, but again, you could still use the
unsweetened plain So Delicious yogurt.
Okay. Some of the other things that we have up here. We have the milks
and the creamers. Now, I talked about nut milk. I love my Almond Cow,
and I use multiple different nuts in my Almond Cow machine to make
nut milk. So, there is a lot of different options if you want it very fresh,
and, of course it’s not going to have any fillers.
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It’s not going to have any other additives. The most that it will have in
it is nuts, water, maybe a little bit of Himalayan salt, maybe a little bit
of vanilla, and a few drops of a sweetener. Stevia, or honey, or maple
syrup. So you have a lot more control over that.
But not everybody wants to make milk every other day, and if you have
a large family, that might be something that’s a little bit harder for you.
So there are some good brands on the market. We really like the Califia
Farms brand. This is a great brand. Found it by accident.
My father, he’s very sensitive to the way that we eat, so he always makes
sure that we have our staples when we get there so that we can do
our main shopping after that, but we’ll have enough to get us through
the first night into breakfast the next morning, and the kids always
love it when he makes them their special breakfast. So we have an
unsweetened. They have a coconut milk version, and this is almond. And
then they have an unsweetened vanilla version. This is probably one of
our staples.
There’s also good ones out there that are shelf stable. And I like
the Pacific brand for that, that are also unsweetened. I love using
unsweetened vanilla. It’s about the most normal to cook with versus
anything else. Of course, you can always use just a plain unsweetened,
but when you’re using it for kids’ cereal or oatmeal or other recipes, in
baking, it’s really good to have the unsweetened vanilla. There’s also an
oat variety if you like that as well.
And they have a lot of different creamers out there. And these are all
unsweetened. They’re all unsweetened and they’re dairy free. So you
have things like coconut macaroon. Again, you can order these online.
These are shelf stable, so you’re able to do that. This is a cinnamon swirl.
You’ve got a toasted marshmallow.
Again, these are unsweetened. And they’re wonderful. It’s great to use
with an organic, low-acid coffee, completely to match the stevias with
the type of nut milk that I’m using in order to make the decision of what
I’m going to call it.
And then we have your canned milks. Some of them contain guar gum,
some don’t. You have to see if you have any allergies. If you haven’t had
an official allergy test done with saliva, hair, nails, all of that, then you
may want to consider doing that, because as you make changes in your
diet, you want to make a note what you’re eating in case you may have
some sensitivities that you didn’t know about.
We do really good with coconut cream. I like the small cans. This is the
basis to how I make my coconut whipped cream. So what I do is I put
it in the fridge. I take it out after a couple hours. Flip it over, open it up,
dump out the liquid, and then you’re left with the cream. Then I put that
together with stevia, maple syrup or honey, and vanilla, and it makes
a wonderful dessert. Not just on berries, but you can use it in place of
anywhere where you would have whipped cream.
So, as you can see, we have a lot of different options here. Now, as far
as eggs go, there’s a lot of bad organic eggs out there, and I was not
as familiar with that. And I started doing some research after a friend
said, “You know, these are just junk organic eggs.” So I started doing the
research. And sure enough, there are so many junk eggs out there.
So you really want “pasture-raised organic,” and it really is worth it to

buy them at an extra rate. Because we go through a lot of eggs here,
I actually label them. It says number one, number two, all the way
down, so that we know what we’re using. And then when I tell the kids
to go downstairs and grab the next thing of eggs, then they know what
number to correspond it with. And I find that that really helps.
And if you don’t want to use eggs, you don’t have to. You can always use
an egg replacer if you’re vegan, but you really want to have good quality
eggs. And I can’t stress the importance of that. For me, it’s the difference
of having a belly ache after I use eggs or not. It makes that much of
a difference, which segues me into what I’m going to talk about next
regarding meat.
So think about this. So, grass-fed. Everything was grass-fed for so long.
Well, then it was like, what are they spraying on their grass? And it’s
really important that there’s a standard. So a lot of people were trying
to get their grass to grow so they could have more cows and do a lot of
things, and so they were doing unnatural things to make the grass grow.
So then the standard was “pasture-raised organic” ground beef. But,

let’s think. If the animal is having any of the things that are inflammatory
ingredients, like the gluten, the dairy, the sugars, all of that stuff they’re
intaking, whether it’s to plump them up at the end or whatnot, if it’s not
grass-fed finished and then they finish it up with grains, then they’re
going to be using these things to fatten up the animals. And eventually,
when that goes down into meat, that’s going to affect your body.
So that’s one of the reasons why we like to do a lot more plant-based

things. But since we do do some meat, there are ones that I recommend,
and certain brands that I’ve used over the years that have been very
trustworthy as far as their standards. So one of those is the Applegate
Farms. I really like Applegate. They do a great job.
So forever, I wished they had a pepperoni that was non-pork based. And
our family does not eat pork. So it was really important to us to have
something like this product, which is an uncured nitrate-free turkey
pepperoni, and there’s lots of good, like I said, options now on the
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market.
This is an organic, grass-fed beef. I like this product as well. They have
one that is a blue label that’s not as lean. I would have had both out
here, but they were out of the other one. I don’t mind either. There’s
certain recipes that I’m going to end up cooking it longer or I know I’m
going to end up reheating it, so I really don’t mind having the extra fat in
there because I want it to stay nice and moist. So it all depends on what
you’re making.
[1:00:00]
They also have good products for lunchmeat that are nitrite free and
have good ingredients. This one has organic turkey breast, sea salt,
potato starch,
chicken broth, and rosemary extract. And this was another company
that we’ve used before, and this one is organic turkey breast, water, sea
salt.
There’s lots of decent products on the market, and nowadays, you go

into a regular supermarket and they’ll have some of these options next
to some of the more traditional options. So I would venture out. I love
to try things with my parents. And for my dad, he shops on taste alone a
lot of times, and all of these things have tasted really, really good. In fact,
my aunt, she fell in love with this milk so much that that’s all they use
now.
Also, nitrate-free organic turkey bacon. Now, we have a lot of people

that come over to our house. And I had one friend, they were like, “There
is no way that turkey bacon is good. It is just not good.” And I said, “Well,
you haven’t had the right turkey bacon.” And as soon as they tried our
turkey bacon, they said, “Wow, that is really, really good.” So just know
that maybe some of the things that I have out here or don’t have out
here, there are other options.
I tried to give you a good variety of everything. There’s even a breakfast

meat, and that’s the chicken and apple. They also have a turkey, a savory
turkey, that’s really good. Nice, clean ingredients, all organic, that are
available as well. So you have some of the more traditional breakfast
options and things, but you have it in more of a healthier light.
And if you’re just new to changing over some of your diet, sometimes it’s
really nice to keep some of those things that you’ve had as a staple, but
just make an upgrade in your choice. And that way, when you start to
transition with some of these other ingredients, then you have at least
upgraded every single way, because every change is a big change. And
these little changes all end up still moving in a positive direction, and
that’s really our goal.
All right. So cultured veggies. We really like the Bubbies brand. They do
have a bread and butter pickle that does have sugar in it, so we do avoid
that one, but they have a really good dill relish. They have a really good
pickle. And they also have a really good sauerkraut as well.
So when I look at these, the ingredients are cucumbers, water, salt,

garlic, dill, spices, mustard seed, and calcium chloride. This is a really
good cultured pickle. It’s made with well water. And we enjoy them
regularly. It’s about as close as you can get to doing it yourself.
And also, you have things like kimchi, and it’s good to have things that
have some naturally occurring probiotics in there that is cultured. That’s
going to help with your gut, and especially if you’ve been told that you
have a leaky gut issue, those are going to help change your digestive
system and how things respond. So I would highly encourage you to try
this brand. I know we talked a little bit about other condiments in the
gluten-free section, but these are some of the other things that I like to
include there with that.
All right. Now we’re going to venture out into our do’s and don’ts when it
comes to buying organic or not organic. And that is the standard that we
like to follow is the Environment Working Group’s the “Clean Fifteen” and
the “Dirty Dozen.” Now, they update and modify this list slightly every
single year, but for the most part, these are the staples that I’ve seen
year after year.
And what we mean by “Clean Fifteen” and “Dirty Dozen” means these
are the clean vegetables and fruits that you don’t need to buy organic,
because when you do need to buy organic, you should, because those
are pesticide-ridden. And a lot of times it’s your salad greens and your
berries and things of that nature that are the hardest hitters when it
comes to that, and your peppers and stuff.
So think about the things in your garden. We want to make sure that if
we’re going to spend the money on organic that we only spend it on the
things that need to be organic.
Now, I’ll give you that sometimes I will buy some organic bananas, but I
only buy organic bananas if I‘m trying to buy in stages. So usually I buy
ripe bananas and I buy slightly green bananas, and then I buy green, so
that I know I’m going to use them all there through the week and that
the other ones are going to slightly turn more yellow. And then if I have
some leftovers, well, then I’m going to make some banana bread.
That’s the only reason why I end up buying any green bananas or yellow
bananas that happen to be organic, is just because it could be that I
need to use them. And the other one is not available in anything but the
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other colors that I don’t need.
All right, so let’s look at the “Clean Fifteen.” These are the least-
sprayed foods. So save your money, because organic is not needed.
Avocados, GMO-free sweet corn, pineapples, cabbages, onions, sweet
peas. Papayas, asparagus, mango, eggplant. Honeydew melon, kiwi,
cantaloupe, cauliflower, broccoli.
Now, if you look at something and it says “organic,” then it is

automatically non-GMO. So just know, if it says “non-GMO,” it doesn’t
automatically mean it’s organic, but if it says “organic,” it is automatically
non-GMO.
Now on to the “Dirty Dozen.” This is the most-sprayed food, so buy

organic only. Strawberries, spinach, nectarines, apples, grapes. Peaches,
cherries, pears, tomatoes, celery, potatoes, sweet bell peppers, and hot
peppers. So, as you can see, we have a few things that we need to buy
organic, but there are some wonderful things that we can buy that are
not organic. So, when you’re going to spend that money, focus on those
dirty items, the “Dirty Dozen,” and buy your organic things.
Now, we are going to go and tackle the processed sugar versus natural
sugar, and what can we do, and how can we make a difference in our
pantry.
Pantry and Sugar-Free Makeover Guide
Now, we are to the sugar part of our recipe makeover. Sweeteners, and
what do we do? Which ones are good? Which ones are not good? We’re
going to navigate some of that today. So, because we have so many
options, I’m going to talk a little bit about what our favorite are, and
what we’ve come up with because of having a variety of different ones
that we like.
So, long story shortened, very first time I made cookies, I thought, oh
my goodness, I am going to do exactly what it says for sugar with maple
syrup, and I’m going to make chocolate chip cookies. So, I do. And it was
so runny and so liquidy that in the end, I had one chocolate chip cookie.
I had 12 on there, but they all merged into one.
And then I thought, well, this might be better as a pan brownie. So then
I tried it in the pan, and it was still so gooey. And then I realized, really,
you’re going to want to use about a half a cup of maple syrup to one
cup of processed sugar. And then if your recipe calls for vanilla--usually
it’s one teaspoon--you use a tablespoon, as I mentioned earlier. But, if it
doesn’t call for vanilla, then I add a teaspoon of it.
So, as I started playing around with recipes, I realized we still could have
things that looked actually like cookies by making the substitutions,
especially when it came to the sugar part of it.
So when I say “sugar,” I’m talking about your white processed sugar that
we are not using, and in place, we’re going to use other things. And for
certain things we’re going to use some things, and other things we’re
going to use other things, and for what things are we going to use those
things for.
[1:10:00]
So, let’s talk about honey. Normally, I always like to have two kinds of
honey. No matter where I’m at, I like to have a raw, organic honey from
the place that I’m at, because that’s also going to help with allergies. It
has your natural allergens, so some micro-doses of that in there. So I like
to have that available.
I also like to use manuka honey. Now, we use the manuka honey when
we make our immune-boosting shot recipe where we incorporate that, a
Lypo-spheric vitamin C, immune-boosting essential oils, and other things
like that so that we can really boost up and make our immune system
robust.
But that is also really good for healing and whatnot, but if you don’t have
manuka honey, you can still add honey to your tea. You can do a lot of
great things with honey. There are certain other places, like I mentioned
earlier, in my Dijon mustard where I make a honey mustard.
And then you have maple syrup. Now what I love about maple syrup
is it’s so versatile. So they used to have it where they measured it in
grades, A, B, C, and then in Michigan, we even had one that was closer
to a D, which looked like a molasses. So that’s going to have your latest
ones from the season. It’s going to have lots and lots of nutrients in it. So
I typically like to go with the darkest maple syrup I can find.
As you can see here, this one is a little bit lighter. This one is darker.
Now they have its name as “Grade A Dark Amber.” So they’ve changed
the names a little bit, but it’s still the same. And then I really like this
company. This is the Coombs Family Farms. I do get a lot of maple syrup
from them when I can’t get it back home.
So back in Michigan, I will buy the maple syrup, and I try to buy it by
the gallon and I get a number of gallons and then bring it back every
summer. But then I get to the point where I run out, so I have to use
what we have locally. And I do really like this company, and I like the
fact that their maple sugar is just organic maple syrup made into the
granules. So I use this a lot. This is one of the things that I use.
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I started making our Christmas Cookies, which is our annual tradition
that we make with the kids. And when we made the Christmas cookies, I
realized I had to come up with a better method and some kind of sugar
blend with natural sweeteners that had different compositions, because
I found I couldn’t just use maple sugar. I couldn’t just use date sugar. I
couldn’t just use coconut sugar. But all of them together worked really
well.
And I found that any time that it called for a cup of sugar that I was using
a half of a cup of this alternative sweetener. And sometimes, based on
the recipe, maybe just a touch more. And one thing I really liked about
the coconut sugar and some of these other alternatives is that you have
a lower glycemic index, so your coconut sugar’s going to have a very low
glycemic index.
So I have a few different brands, and just to show you that there is a lot
of options out there, so this is the Coconut Secret, their version. This
one is great, the Big Tree Farms. It’s just certified fair organic granulated
coconut blossom nectar, and organic vanilla bean. Two ingredients. And
I like that combination together. It gives it a good, nice, rich flavor. And
again, organic coconut sugar.
Then we’ve got your date sugar. It’s just organic date sugar. And this is
very granulated. Some of them can be where it’s more like a mid-grade
grind there. And then this is super, super fine. So you have some options
when it comes to the granulated dates as well.
And this is the combination. I’m going to teach you how I make my
Christmas cookie blend, or my “non-sugar sugar.” But we just nicknamed
it our Christmas cookie blend. And then I also add both the cinnamon
and the pumpkin pie spice powders. If you didn’t have the pumpkin pie
spice powder, you could always just use cinnamon.
And I make what I use to make cinnamon rolls and some of the other
treats…where I need to top on the top side of a pie, I’ll use my blend for
that. So I use that in cooking as another method of using the Christmas
cookie blend.
I also make my homemade confectioner’s sugar that way, and of course,

you’ll need a thickener. So I like to use the organic, non-GMO--because
we talked about that earlier, if it’s organic, it’s automatically non-GMO-
-corn starch, but you could also use tapioca or arrowroot, which I have
all of those, and then you blend that with the Christmas cookie blend in
order to get your own confectioner’s sugar. So I do use that.
I love all of these ingredients, but probably our favorite is stevia. And
I want to talk about that, because if you’ve tried stevia in the past and
you haven’t liked it or it had an aftertaste, it could be because of a few
reasons. It could be that your stevia was mixed with other things. And if
it is, then it may not be something that you want, especially if it’s a Truvia
or something of that nature, because a lot of times they’ll mix it with
other things, and then it’s really not a true stevia.
Also, I’m going to show you…when I process my stevia, and I do this

every year, and I have tons of stevia. I have huge stevia plants. So when
I process my stevia every year, I then dehydrate it. I pull the leaves off
of the sticks that are left from the plant, and then I pulverize it in my
blender. It has a nice aromatic smell.
It’s an herb, so it’s one of the purest forms of sweetener naturally. And
when I pulverize it, notice it’s still green. And it’s still green at that point.
And it’s still greenish at this point, where it’s pulverized.
Now, this is typically the stevia you’ll see at the store, which this is the
best one of the ones that they have. It’s organic stevia leaf extract. But,
again, look at the color. The color is white. So this is going to be--even
though it’s organic--more processed. If it’s more processed, then it’s
going to have more of an aftertaste.
So, depending on what you’re using, this may or may not be the best
option for what you’re using. So they have a number of brands out there
of liquid stevia, and this is one of the best ways to do it. And a lot of my
recipes call for eyedroppers full of this or that stevia. So, they have the
Kal brand, which is one of our favorites. The Kal brand is wonderful, and
it has apple cider vinegar in it, and it’s wonderful.
Then you also have your Sweet Drops. And, of course, the Sweet Drops
is another one of our favorite ones. It has purified water, natural
aromatics, and organic stevia leaf extract. So, we also have one that’s a
glycerin base, and this is vegetable glycerin, organic stevia extract, and a
natural vanilla flavor.
And I’ve talked to a lot of these different companies, and they’re using
a food-grade essential oil to actually flavor them. So, with that in mind,
you really have to make a decision as to what you’re going to use for
different things.
For a tea, I like the honey. For a tea, I also like the stevia. I make a lot
of stevias. I make a lot of coffee lattes. We have our fit family that we
do volleyball with on the weekends, and every weekend I’m bringing
different things. So I like to have a good variety.
But, when I’m making baked goods, I really like to use either the maple
syrup or my Christmas cookie blend. So I can’t wait to share that recipe
with you. It’s become quite a staple. Basically, I use my food processor.
You can use a blender, or, of course, you can use a Vitamix. All of those
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things I’ve used, and each one does a little bit different of a job. My
favorite is really the Vitamix. So we’re going to talk a little bit about that.
I’m going to process some of this combination, and then I like to store it
in jars.
So, we have our Christmas cookie blend, and I have larger containers
of it in quart jars. Then I have the one where I added the cinnamon
and pumpkin pie spice, or you could just use cinnamon. And then we
have the natural confectioner’s sugar, where we mixed that then with
a thickener, like a corn starch, tapioca starch, or arrowroot powder. All
right. We’re going to go ahead and make our Christmas cookie blend.
Christmas Cookie Blend
Now that I have bragged up my Christmas cookie sugar mixture, or

Christmas cookie blend, I want to make it for you so that you can do this
at home, because it really is that easy to have a nice, healthy sweetener
that you use.
[1:20:00]
And because we’re so fanatical over here--well, at least Dr. Z is about

his cookies--that’s one of the reasons why we name it that, because we
make pretty much most of the cookies that we make for the year at
around the Christmas time, and then we freeze them.
And sometimes, it’s a race to have them eaten at the end when it comes
to Thanksgiving and we actually take them on the road with us. So I’m
not as big of a cookie person, but Dr. Z definitely is, so we have to be
fully stocked with the right tools. So I’m going to teach you exactly what
to do so that you have this special blend on hand to use in a healthy
way to make some of the things that you would normally make using
processed sugar.
Okay. We started out with 16 ounces, or one pound, of our coconut

sugar. Then you want to use 14 to 16 ounces of date sugar. So I’m just
going to pour it in here. And, like I said, you can do this in both the
Vitamix or a food processor, and so I wanted to show you both. Then we
have six ounces of our maple sugar. Says there six ounces per batch.
They actually have a smaller bag that is six ounces. That’s how I started
making it. It was just easier to do it that way, and then I’m like, oh, this is
crazy. They have a huge container.
So how do I measure six ounces? I use a standard scale. It’s very easy to
use that and super effective. All right. So we’re going to put our lids on.
And you really want your lids to be nice and tight. They need to be for
them to start, but also because it’s going to push out some additional air
as well. So I’m going to just come to the side here.
So once it starts to incorporate, then I’m going to turn it up a little bit

more. Wonderful. That’s perfect. All right. We’re just going to walk
around here and turn this one on. We’re going to start with the pulse.
You’re still going to have some chunks in there, so you really want to
make sure it’s properly processed in there. Wonderful. There’s still a
couple chunks. And those will work out if you’re going to use it for a later
recipe.
Okay. These are pretty good. This is what the Christmas cookie blend
looks like, or our Christmas cookie sugar recipe, or you can make up
your own name for it, but our “not-sugar sugar” recipe. So, how do we
take care of it? I like to use a glass jar and a canning funnel, and I find
that that’s the best. I’m going to move a few of these things out of the
way so we can see here what we’re doing.
Okay. So we want to put that on there. We’re going to leave it just like
that. All right. You want to grab a spatula that you can use to steer in
that way as well. This way, if you have any other things that didn’t quite
get blended up you can do that at this time.
So then, in order to do my other mixtures, I’m just going to teach you

a little secret because I like to have these things on hand. So you can
always make small, small batches of things, or you can figure out other
things that work really well together.
And this recipe is such a good one, and it is versatile, so when you’re
making your confectioner’s blend, or if you’re going to mix it with your
not-to-cinnamon and sugar. All right. Good deal. And then you’re going
to put your lid on. We’ve got one down, there. Okay. Perfect.
So what we’re going to do in order to make our other blend is we want

to fill it up about half way. So we still do have some harder chunks in
here, and I’m going to go ahead and process those. I think when you get
down to this…and you’re going to have that. These are natural mixtures.
There’s not extra things in there for anticaking and all that other stuff
that’s not natural that they put into a lot of these items, so it’s really
important that you are the natural de-caker.
And not every mixture is going to come out the same. Every mixture’s
going to be totally different. So I’m going to start with that pulse again.
Okay. Good. So we’ve broken up a lot more of that. So what I’m going to
do is I’m going to make this about one-half to two-thirds full. You can go
as high as three-fourths of the way full. I’ll drop a couple of the last little
harder chunks in there.
The coconut sugar is usually one of the largest problematic ones that
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will chunk up on you. All right. So that looks pretty good. I’ll do just a
touch more. All right. That’s great. Now we’re going to empty the rest of
it in here. We’re going to use that for another recipe.
And I have plenty of these containers, so I use them all the time. You just
have to remember if it’s not your end recipe to put it back in the right
container and make sure it’s labeled. I love the pint jars for that. All right.
I think we got it all there. Perfect. Okay.
So, our next thing that we’re going to do is we’re going to go ahead and
we’re going to make some of the other mixtures that we talked about.
We’re going to make the one that has the cinnamon and pumpkin pie
spice, and we’re also going to make the natural confectioner’s sugar. So
I’m going to set up for that, and we’ll be right back.
Natural Confectioner’s Sugar “Not” Cinnamon and Sugar Recipe
All right. Because we’re going to make a larger batch, I usually take this
pint jar and I fill it to about two-thirds. You can go one-half to two-thirds,
but I’m going to do it in this jar because I’m then going to process it from
there. Again, you can do it with a much smaller amount, and it could
be…you could use as little as a couple of teaspoons of the organic corn
starch, arrowroot powder, or tapioca.
In this case, this is what I like to do, and then I’m going to use a dry goods
container strictly for dry goods…although, don’t tell anybody, I do make
some of my dips in there that way. I’ve got to break the rules sometimes,
because it’s a smaller amount. All right.
So I’m just going to stick it right in there, and because I’m going to be
putting it back in this container, I’m just going to go right back and do
that. And this is this easy. And because that’s going right in there, we’re
just going to start it up. Okay. Right at the base level again, and then
we’re going to start turning it up. Okay.
[1:30:00]
Now I’m just going to put my little spatula…and remember, I decided to

use the ones that had the extra particles that needed to be blended up
a little bit more on purpose, so I’m going to just try to get anything off of
the sides here, just to make sure it’s pretty even. Okay. Okay, that’s about
good. Any last mixing we’re going to do right here and pour it in. It’s that
simple. This is our natural confectioner’s sugar.
Each batch is going to depend on the color of it. So sometimes it’s really
light. Sometimes it’s darker. If you want yours to be lighter and fluffier,
you can always add more of the tapioca starch or the organic corn starch
or the arrowroot powder just to make that difference. Good deal. All
right. And then I’m going to set that right there. Perfect.
So now we’re going to move on to our next one right here, which we’re
going to blend there in the same spot. So I’m going to go ahead and I’m
going to put some cinnamon powder…I’m not going to need as much.
There we go. And for Dr. Z, we’re going to make sure we use some of our
pumpkin pie spice.
Now, if our pumpkin pie spice powder gets down to just a half, he says
we’re at critical level, so we don’t want to do that for Dr. Z. But we are
going to use our container, pop it in. Good deal. And if I have more I’m
going to put a little bit more to top off my other container since I just
had made that in the last week. Okay. Perfect. I’m going to do my last
stirring here. Let’s see if we can’t get that all in there. Yep, everything
looks great. Really good mixture this time.
Now, my mom, her great-great aunt had a book, and it was your
house-keeper’s manual, and that was meaning the wife, okay? The
housekeeper, back in the day. And it said that even an experienced
housekeeper buries a loaf of bread in the back yard.
So it goes to show you that even the most experienced people can still
have issues when it comes in the kitchen, or with using new recipes.
So give yourself a break. If something doesn’t turn out right, make
adjustments. Make sure that you write down what you did so that you
can duplicate it or not duplicate it again.
And because we had our cinnamon mixture and I put it in this jar, now
I’m going to put it in a jar that says what it is. So I had my Christmas
cookie blend. We changed it into confectioner’s, and now we’ve changed
it into our cinnamon and not-sugar blend. So we are good to go. Both of
them fit.
So this is how you adapt your recipe to use it for multiple different
places, and you can use these anywhere that it calls for cinnamon and
sugar, and anywhere that it calls for confectioner’s sugar or powdered
sugar. This is how we make our frostings. This is how we make a lot of
different things here.
And I encourage you to try and explore with your recipes. Remember, a
lot of times when it’s natural sweeteners, you’ll use half as much of what
you would for powdered sugar, for confectioner’s sugar, or if cinnamon
and sugar, it’s going to be about equal because we put a lot of extra
cinnamon in there, which is also great, because it helps balance your
blood sugar.
So, with the confectioner’s sugar, start there. Don’t add any of the liquid
in if you’re talking about using it for frosting. I start out with your oil or
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butter base. I add the sweetener. And then, once I get it to a thickness
that I like, then I start gently and slowly adding any liquid mixtures.
I start with the vanilla, and sometimes that’s all it’s going to need, or
whatever you’re going to use extract-wise or essential oil-wise to flavor
your frosting. Then I slowly will add either the milk or coffee that you
have to make your frosting.
So take your time with your recipes as you’re redeveloping some of them
and as you’re making those substitutions with your recipe makeover.
And whether it is in your pantry or your refrigerator or your freezer,
remember, working out the dairy, the gluten, and the sugars, are
going to transform not just your kitchen but also all your inflammatory
conditions are going to be eased in such a great way.
So where are some of the places that we can find these ingredients?
Well, we’ve talked about some of them today. Of course, there’s places
like Costco, Publix, Kroger, Ralphs, any of your local grocery stores. My
favorite, of course, is your local health food store. Then you have your
Trader Joe’s. There are lots of different places.
And then, of course, your places online, like Thrive Market. Also Amazon
or Prime Now. Instacart. There’s a lot of different places that shop many
different stores so you’re able to even do it from the comfort of your
own home. And, of course we can’t forget there’s also Whole Foods.
Well, that’s just a little starting, and I can’t wait to hear and see what you
do in your kitchen to help transform your health!
ROLE OF FOOD AND NUTRIENTS
Guest: Peter Osborne, DC, DACBN, PScD
Dr. Peter Osborne: Hey, everybody. Dr. Osborne here, honored to be

a part of the Psoriasis, Eczema, and Skin Disease Masterclass. Today
I’m going to be diving into nutrition. Everything you should know about
food, about vitamins and minerals and how they relate to a variety
of different skin diseases. We’re going to be focusing primarily on
eczema, psoriasis, as well as dermatitis, and acne. And so with our time
constraints, we’re going to be focusing on those things.
So let’s dive in. Okay, so a lot of times you hear and you may have
already been to the dermatologist and been told diet has nothing to do
with skin disease. I get this countless times from the people that come to
visit with me in my clinic. And so the reality is diet has everything to do
with skin disease. There are a number of different parameters around
food that can trigger skin problems and food allergy is one of them but
we also have things like food sensitivity and food intolerance.
We have nutritional deficiencies and nutrients that are important for

skin health and skin development. And then we also have to worry
about different medications. So we’re going to be diving into all of these
different topics today, and hopefully giving you a much broader and
greater understanding of how you can get your skin back up to full
health.
So what I’m showing you on the screen here, we’re going to go to

a research study here. You can see here that this was published
just recently, Journal of Dermatological Treatment. And so the best
349
improvement in skin was reported when removing white flour products,
so 53.6% of patients felt or showed improvement. Gluten, we’ve got
51.4% of people showed improvement with gluten removal. And
nightshades, 51.4% of people noticed improvement with nightshade
removal. So you see the best improvement in skin was noted when
adding vegetables, organic foods, and fish oil.
So again, we’re talking about what you take away and what you can add
too. So taking away, again, flour, gluten, nightshades, and adding to that
organic food, vegetables, as well as fish oil all led to improvements in
overall skin health. Although 93.5% of patients believed it was important
that physicians discuss with them the role of diet in managing skin
disease, only 32.5% had consulted their dermatologist. Now let’s think
about that for a minute.
The vast majority, 93 plus percent agree that nutrition is important as

it relates to their skin disease but only 32 and a half percent of people
had ever talked to their dermatologist about it. Now, I would argue that
maybe it’s not only 32 and a half percent talk to the dermatologist. I
would argue that most dermatologists dismiss nutrition just right out
of the gates. And so if you look over here, again, on this diagram to the
right, you see dermatologists don’t train in nutrition. Not unless they go
to extra school, postgraduate education to learn more about it.
This lack of training leads to dismissal of the importance of nutrition

and skin related diseases. And this dismissal causes a lack of patient
confidence and trust in the doctor. And so many patients will go outside
of their dermatologists and they’ll make diet changes on their own.
They’ll do their own research. And I think it’s important to understand,
because if you’re watching this show, you’ve probably been to a
dermatologist and been told that diet change won’t affect your skin. If
you’ve been diagnosed with eczema or psoriasis or vitiligo, or any of
the other forms of autoimmune skin conditions, you’ve almost certainly
been told that.
But let’s look at what some of the research actually has to say. So check
out what I’m going to put up on the board for you. You can see this,
there was a special issue recently published called The Gut-Skin Axis and
Mechanisms for Communication. It was talking about the relationship
between gut health and skin disease manifestation. An entire issue was
devoted to the topic because of the evolving research in this area.
You can also see the actual online journal, Dermatology Times,
published recently an article titled Leaky Gut, Leaky Skin or Both? And
it was highlighting the connection between leaky gut and skin disease.
Then there have been a couple of other published research studies,
one called The Role of Medical Nutrition Therapy in Dermatology, It’s a
comprehensive review of everything that we know. Another one entitled
The Role of Micronutrients in Skin Health and Function.
So these are again, relatively new studies. Even though we’ve known
about nutrition and skin disease for many years, we’re now seeing more
and more research come out about it. So again, you’ve probably been
to your doctor, they’ve probably dismissed nutrition. I just want to start
this class by helping you understand that dismissing nutrition is a huge
mistake and now research is starting to catch up with that thought
process.
So let’s talk about food. Food is a major trigger for skin disease. And so
there’s top categories I’m going to give you and I think this is a key point
or a key takeaway. So if you’re taking notes, you want to write these
things down. So the top food categories that you want to suspect first.
Number one is grain, specifically gluten but gluten and grains, very, very
big categories. I showed you earlier a research study that showed more
than 50% of patients showed improvement by avoiding gluten.
The second category, your food category to avoid, in my experience,

but also based on much research is dairy. And we’ll get into some of
the depths of why that is here shortly. We also know that sugar is a big
one and that includes foods that are processed or packaged, or refined
that have added sugar in them. We know that non-organic foods with
added pesticides are a major player in this. These pesticides caused gut
problems, leaky gut dysbiosis, which can lead to skin manifestation.
And then there’s a few additional categories that you’re going to want
to consider if you’ve done all those things already. So maybe you’re
watching this show, maybe trying to glean a new pearl that you can
implement. And so these other two categories, one is histamine
containing foods, and another is salicylate containing foods. So
those are categories of things that you might consider if you’ve tried
everything else and you might want to begin an investigation into
histamine and salicylate.
And always, when in doubt, you’re going to hear me say this a number
of times today but when you’re in doubt, don’t guess; test, and there are
a number of different tests. Stay with me to the end, I’ll help you, I’ll give
you some tests that you can take to your doctor to get run to get you
better clarity on all of these things.
Okay, before we dive into the nuance of these different diseases, I

think it’s important to have a conversation about what allergies actually
are. So I’m going to put a diagram on the board for you here. What
351
you’re looking at here, allergies equal or are an immune response
or an immune reaction. Meaning your immune system views some
components of that food as a potential threat and mounts some type of
a response.
So what you’re looking at in this diagram is you’re looking at acute

allergies on that left side of the diagram. And so acute allergies typically
manifest with IgE responses. This is how doctors typically test acute
allergies. Oftentimes, they’ll do either a skin prick type of test, or they’ll
do a blood test measuring IgE antibodies. Now it’s important understand
that acute reactions or acute allergies can manifest symptomatically,
meaning from the moment you’re exposed to them, they can manifest
symptomatically within immediate timeframe, all the way up to three
hours out.
So there’s this window of reactivity we typically see in an acute response,

again, from immediate all the way up to three hours. Now, this acute
response can create an inflammatory cascade. And that inflammatory
cascade has been shown to cause damage; damage to tissues, and
in this case as we’re talking about today, skin damage. And that
enough skin damage over time can manifest as a variety of different
inflammatory skin conditions.
Now on the other side of this diagram, you’re going to see there’s
another type of allergy, although technically many people or I should
say, in academia, many doctors would refer to this not as an allergy; they
would refer to it as a sensitivity or a hypersensitivity. So you’ll see there,
delayed hyper sensitivity. Now, delayed hypersensitivities can happen in
many different ways. We can produce antibodies to a particular food or
substance in the food and those antibodies can vary.
So there’s IgG, IgA, IgM, are the main types of antibodies that we might
see in a delayed fashion against a food or a substance found in food. But
we also have other types of responses that are delayed in nature. A T
cell response, which is when your T cells directly react, and then we also
have something called an immune complex reaction. Now, if you look
here, IgG and IgA are the two that most doctors will measure.
So when you get a food sensitivity test done, most of the time IgG and
IgA are the two substances that are being measured, but the other
substances are completely being ignored. And that’s important for you
to understand because you may have had some food sensitivity testing
done in the past, and check it because if it’s only measuring IgG or IgA,
you’re missing parts of this puzzle.
[10:00]
There may be foods that you’re still reactive to that you don’t know
you’re reactive to because not all of the appropriate pathways for
inflammation were detected or tested for. So a very, very important key
point there.
So you can see here in this literature review on diet and dermatitis,
I’m going to read it to you for a minute. So in atopic dermatitis, dietary
factors are more likely to cause an exacerbation among infants and
children, with moderate to severe atopic dermatitis, relative to other
populations. Meaning if your child has already atopic disease or atopic
dermatitis, they’re more likely to have food allergies. Now foods may
trigger rapid IgE or immunoglobulin E mediated hypersensitivity
reactions, or may lead to late eczematous reactions.
Keyword, key point late eczematous reactions; not acute flares in the
skin. Sometimes when you eat something you’re allergic to, the classic
peanut allergy, you might break out in hives, your lips might swell,
your throat might constrict. Those are pretty common anaphylactic
symptoms of a food allergy. But some people have a late response that
leads to more of an eczema like presentation. That’s what eczematous
means.
While immediate reactions occur within minutes to hours of food

exposure, as I mentioned a minute ago, that window was immediate to
three hours, late eczematous reactions may occur anywhere from hours
to days later. And actually, it’s even longer than that, there’s a window of
up to three weeks. And folks, this is why it’s so important that you can
do a food elimination diet, and you should if you’re struggling with a skin
problem.
But if you’ve done a food elimination diet, you can’t figure it out, there’s
still a problem, you’re still struggling, you really have to consider proper
testing because that window of reactivity is up to three weeks long. It’s
really hard to keep a food elimination diet that goes out for three weeks.
You miss a lot, and it can be very, very challenging.
Now I want to make some other delineations. So I’m going to show you

another image here on the board. So we’re looking here at intolerance.
So there’s food allergy, then there’s food sensitivity, and there’s also
food intolerance. So we’re going to talk about intolerance. And as you
can see here, intolerance or sensitivity is typically, when you have an
inability to digest that food. And so there are a number of examples of
food intolerance. For example, dairy intolerance or lactose intolerance
is when you lack the digestive enzyme to break down the sugar in dairy;
that lactase which breaks down lactose, the name of the sugar in dairy.
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That’s an intolerance.
So intolerance is not directly an immune reaction, it’s an inability to

digest. And when that food sits inside of your gut and it won’t digest, it
can create a dysbiosis. It can create a kind of a promotion of growth of
abnormal bacteria and then that subsequently can lead to things like
leaky gut or intestinal permeability. Now, the problem here is if you have
an intolerance, an intolerance, through causing leaky gut, can actually
cause more allergies to occur.
That’s what acquired allergy means. Meaning, you’re not truly allergic
to that food substance but you’ve acquired an allergy to that substance
because your gut is leaking in your immune system. Remember, 70%
of your immune system is concentrated within your gut lining. So when
foods are leaking across that barrier, you have a greater tendency
to start becoming more and more allergic to those foods and food
components.
And of course, we’ve got research and evidence where we know that
that again, acquired allergy, leads to responses and leads to things like
skin damage or skin inflammation, and subsequently skin disease. But
that’s not all. So again, back on the diagram here you can see that an
intolerance can also create leaky gut. And one a classic example of an
intolerance or sensitivity is gluten. Gluten sensitivity is known. So gluten
is known to create an abnormal zonulin response, which directly causes
leaky gut and subsequently can contribute to acquired allergy and skin
damage.
We also have one more element here though, so we know that

sensitivity can also lead to the production of immune system antibodies
and inflammatory chemicals. And so again, I showed you earlier with
delayed hypersensitivity, there’s crossover here. So with this sensitivity,
we get production of immune chemicals that are inflammatory
in nature. And many of these can activate damage to the GI tract
through that inflammation, leading to permeability or leaky gut, which
again, subsequently causes more food allergies to occur. So multiple
mechanisms there.
Now, there’s what we call the top eight. So when we’re talking about IgE,
we’re talking about IgE allergy response, acute allergy response, there
are eight very, very common ones and we’ll put that up on the board for
you. So wheat, dairy, soy, egg, peanut, and tree nuts. So peanut is not a
tree nut, although oftentimes it’s called a tree nut. Peanut is actually a
legume. But tree nuts; that would be things like walnuts and pecans etc.
And then fish, and then crustacean shellfish. Those are your top eight
allergens.
Now I’ve added a few to that list that in my clinical experience and in
many other doctors and researchers’ experience and publications have
also found high levels of allergy or high levels of response to these
things. And the top one there is grains. So, some people when they go
gluten free they only go wheat, barley, and rye free. But this includes
corn and rice, and oat. Even though those are classically considered
to be gluten free, they can still be a major problem, creating major
responses. And then sugar, although sugar is not typically tested when
your doctor is running that skin prick test. Sugar is not something they
usually test for, but sugar as an allergen, you can be allergic to sugar,
and it’s very common.
And the next is food additives. And there are a variety of different food
additives. We have predecessors in this field like Dr. Feingold, who
studied food preservatives and food dyes as being stimulants in babies
and children. But other food additives, things like MSG and glutamate
are known to trigger eczema or increase dermatitis in kids, also in
infants. So food additives also need to be considered when we’re talking
about food because sometimes when we eat food, it’s not the food we’re
reacting to as much as it could be the additives within the food.
Well, let’s talk about gluten. Gluten is going to be a big focus of this class
and that’s because gluten can contribute to so many problems as it
relates to the immune system and subsequently, creating autoimmunity
and skin disease. So let’s talk about some of the big things gluten can do.
Number one, we know that gluten can alter gut flora. Lots of research
that shows that gluten can create or contribute to a gut flora that is kind
of more conducive to eczema and atopic disease.
We also know that gluten can cause gastrointestinal inflammation, and

that’s from the mouth all the way down to the anus. Most people think
of gluten reaction as celiac disease, which is isolated and localized to
the small intestine. But that’s not a hundred percent true at all, we know
that gluten can cause aphthous ulcers in the mouth. We know gluten
can cause eosinophilic infiltration into the esophagus, causing basically,
erosions in the esophagus, leading to pain, chest pressure, symptoms of
reflux. We know gluten can cause gastritis, which is inflammation of the
stomach.
We’re certainly all aware that gluten can cause celiac disease. But we
also know that there’s a relationship between gluten and the lower
bowel, inflammatory diseases of the lower bowel. So when that entire
GI tract can be damaged by a single substance, we have to keep that
in mind because that single substance has the ability again, that
permeability can happen, which can cause an assault on our immune
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system. The foods that are coming through that we’re eating, once that
gut is damaged; number one, that food can’t be digested very well, so
we become malnourished.
That’s why that fourth bullet there, gluten causes malabsorption and
malnutrition. But we know that inflammation disrupts the barrier and
leads to a leaky gut scenario, which can lead to acquired allergies.
So a person starts collecting food allergies in a sense, and they just
start reacting to many things that they’re eating, and this is what can
make this so complicated. But gluten, in my experience, and I’ve been
practicing for over 20 years, gluten in my experience, is arguably
the number one trigger in skin disorders. So if you haven’t already
considered a gluten-free diet, it’s something I would highly encourage
you to investigate into more.
We know that gluten can cause celiac disease. We know that there’s a
new... it’s really not new, but it’s it was coined a number of years ago, it’s
called non-celiac gluten sensitivity. Meaning gluten can cause damage
that is not consistent with the way celiac disease presents. So celiac
disease presents predominantly as vomiting, diarrhea, wasting, and
malnutrition. Whereas, non-celiac gluten sensitivity typically manifests
as some form of autoimmune disease. And it’s all over the map because
there are over a hundred different forms of autoimmunity and many of
them, gluten has been linked to.
And so that being said, we know gluten causes autoimmune

inflammation of the skin and there are actually certain skin diseases
that gluten has been directly linked to. And so I’m going to share a list of
those with you. One of them is dermatitis herpetiformis. Now, if you’ve
ever been diagnosed with that, that’s an instant diagnosis of celiac
disease. Meaning that DH, dermatitis herpetiformis, is the way that the
skin reacts in celiacs. So, a diagnosis of DH by default means you have
celiac disease.
[20:00]
There are also other autoimmune inflammatory conditions of the

skin linked to gluten. Psoriasis is one of them, vitiligo, which is the
depigmentation disease of the skin. We also know that alopecia,
autoimmune alopecia like alopecia areata, which is a skin disorder
on the surface because your skin contains the hair follicles and that
autoimmune reaction against the hair follicles in the skin leads to a loss
of hair, a massive loss of hair. And then we know eczema; eczema also,
sometimes there are different kinds of dermatitis and eczema. They
come by many different names but eczema and dermatitis are very, very
highly late to gluten exposure.
We know that gluten can cause a leaky gut and through that gluten
can be a primary driver of skin inflammation through that leaky gut.
And then when the skin is inflamed, that now we have even more
problems because when you develop leaky skin, so those of you with
severe psoriasis, severe eczema, your skin barrier is basically breached.
Remember, the skin is super critical as an innate part of your immune
system. It keeps you from getting infected. It protects you. It helps you
retain your water and keeps you hydrated.
The skin helps protect you against a variety of different assaults from
the environment, including radiation, particularly ultraviolet radiation
from the sun. And so when the skin barrier is breached, your health
can deteriorate very quickly. So we can go really quickly from gluten
sensitive to leaky gut, to skin inflammation, to leaky skin. And you want
to know that because the way back is to reverse engineer that process.
Let’s talk a little bit about leaky gut. So, what does leaky gut damage do?
The first thing it does is it overstimulates the immune system. Important
to understand, as you’re eating certain foods, those foods are leaking
through your gut barrier. And your immune system, about 70 to 80%
of the entire immune system sits behind that gut barrier. It’s called the
GALT, the gastro associated lymphoid tissue. Now as those foods are
leaking into that GALT, that immune system is starting to react to foods.
Remember that food, the purpose of your gut is to quarantine the bad
from food and to absorb the good from food. But if that quarantine
is breached, then the bad starts leaking in and it over stimulates the
immune system. So in essence, the immune system becomes more and
more alert, and I should say, on more and more high alert. So it starts
to become over reactive. And it’s over reactive immune systems that
generally tend to start triggering the autoimmune response.
We also know that leaky gut allows bacterial and viral toxins, so not just
food proteins that leak through but bacterial and viral toxins, fungal
toxins, like Candida, if you’ve got Candida overgrowth. Those are all
things that can leak past an intestinal hyperpermeability situation
directly into your bloodstream and start really wreaking havoc and
inflammation throughout the body. We know that a leaky gut leads to
an increase in allergenicity to food. So again, as I mentioned earlier, you
start collecting food allergies.
We know that it sets the sets the stage for a process called molecular
mimicry. Sometimes food proteins can have similarities with your own
tissue. So for example, we know that certain food proteins can look
like your thyroid or look like your liver. And what that means is those
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foods are causing your immune system to become over reactive. And
those foods look like your liver or your thyroid, or other tissues, your
immune system will now start to turn and attack those other tissues
because it’s thinking that those tissues are those foods. That’s molecular
mimicry, the molecules in the food mimic your own tissue, leading to
an autoimmune response against your own tissue. That’s molecular
mimicry in a nutshell.
We know that leaky gut can cause an abnormal microbiome, meaning

it can start to disrupt the healthy flora within the GI tract. We know that
leaky gut as a byproduct is inflammation to the GI tract. And we know it
can cause malabsorption of vitamins and minerals and other nutrients
which are critical for healing. So even though your skin manifestation,
your skin disease might be being caused by a particular food, like gluten,
you can remove that food. But if you’ve become malnourished in the
process of developing skin disease, then what ultimately happens is
you don’t heal effectively. So that now absorption and that malnutrition
become very important to address. We’ll talk more about that. So stick
with me.
We also know that leaky gut, as it triggers skin inflammation, it triggers

leaky skin. So lots there that we know about leaky gut or intestinal
permeability. I’ve actually seen some doctors say that leaky gut doesn’t
exist. And I asked, “When’s the last time you read a medical journal?”
because all you have to do is do a simple archive search in any major
journal and you’re going to find a number of articles relating to the
topic of leaky gut. So if you’ve been told that leaky gut is a myth, please,
please, please do a little bit more research into it. And on this slide, I’ve
put some research studies for you, if you want to go back and track
those down.
We know that lots of things can cause leaky gut. So it’s not just
gluten. I’ve given you a diagram here. Potatoes have been shown to
cause leaky gut, not in everyone, but in some people. GMO foods, so
genetically modified organisms. Plastics, we know can cause leaky
gut. The pesticides have been studied to cause leaky gut. Aggressive
exercise. So this is that that classic example of a person who exercises
so aggressively that afterwards they’re super nauseous, and they throw
up. That’s actually a reflexive mechanism, the body’s getting the food out
of the gut because there’s a breach and the body’s smarter than we are
sometimes. So aggressive exercise can lead to leaky gut.
Medications, a number of different medicines can cause leaky gut.

Infection can cause leaky gut. That’s actually how leaky gut was
discovered originally, was accidentally with an infectious microorganism.
And then food sensitivities and food allergies can also cause leaky gut.
So these are some of the top causes that we know for sure that have
been studied to trigger leaky gut.
So back to gluten. Here’s a diagram, it’s from a study published here

recently on what’s known as the extra intestinal manifestations of gluten
exposure. So, again, the classic celiac will have diarrhea, vomiting, they’ll
have bloated abdomen, they’ll have pain in the abdomen. If you’re a
child, you won’t grow, so they’ll have failure to thrive. That’s classic
celiac disease. But there are many other ways that gluten exposure can
manifest.
And you can see in this diagram I’ve highlighted for you some of the
dermatological or the skin based manifestations that are present with
gluten exposure. And you can see here in this study, vitiligo, psoriasis,
and alopecia areata, again that’s that disease of autoimmune damage
to the hair follicles in the skin, those three in this research study, linked
to gluten sensitivity. Now, that’s not the only three but that study
highlighting those particular ones.
Now I’m going to show you another research study. In this one you
can see here, however, many patients with diagnosed NCGS. Now,
NCGS stands for non-celiac gluten sensitivity. Okay, so many patients
with diagnosed non-celiac gluten sensitivity that present intestinal
manifestations have skin lesions that need appropriate characterization.
Meaning again, skin manifestation of non-celiac gluten sensitivity is
quite common. You see here, in this study, all presented very itchy,
dermatological manifestations, morphologically similar to eczema,
psoriasis, or dermatitis herpetiformis.
Again, three different types of skin disease manifesting in people with

gluten sensitivity that didn’t have classic celiac disease symptoms. You
see here, the similarity was also confirmed histologically, meaning they
took specimens from the skin and confirmed it under a microscope. And
found that these non-celiac gluten sensitivity skin manifestations, again,
looked just like psoriasis, eczema, and dermatitis herpetiformis. So,
important understand that gluten can cause skin manifestation.
Now, I mentioned earlier gluten can cause malnutrition. And I also

mentioned that when you’re malnourished and you have a skin disease
or a major skin inflammation, it can be very hard to heal. Because what
do we need to heal? We need vitamins; we need minerals in order to
heal the damage. And so what I’m showing you here, we’re going to put
a study up on the board. This was just recently published out of Mayo
Clinic Proceedings on gluten and malnutrition.
You can see in the 309 patients in this study, they found that 20% of
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them had low protein, that’s albumin, they found that copper was low in
6.4%. That vitamin B12 was low in 5.3% and folate was low in 3.6%. That
vitamin D was low in 19%. And that ferritin and iron were low in almost
31%. Now, I would say this about this research study, as much as they
endeavored to do a great job, a lot of their measurements for nutrients,
they were measuring serum values.
And what I want you to understand by that is serum values, when

you’re measuring serum copper or serum B12, or serum folate, serum
values are not a super great reflection of body storage of nutrients. So
oftentimes what we’ll find is that serum levels oftentimes will be normal
when intracellular levels will oftentimes be low.
[30:00]
So this study found a lot of nutritional deficiency in people with gluten

issues and they found it using methodologies that weren’t as accurate.
So the problem is actually much bigger than that and I’ve done research
in over 20 years in my own clinic in the same area.
But I’m going to show you another research study published in the
journal, Nutrients and you can see here how common is nutritional
deficiency in those with gluten sensitivity? 87.5% of patients diagnosed
were deficient in at least one nutrient. 53.8% diagnosed were deficient
in at least two nutrients. 7.5% were deficient in vitamin A. 14.5% were
deficient in vitamin B6. 20%, deficient in folate. 19%, deficient in vitamin
B12. 67%, deficient in zinc. 46%, deficient in iron and 32% of them had
verifiable anemia on their general CBC, their complete blood counts.
So another study just showing massive levels of malnutrition in people

with gluten related issues. And so it’s important that you understand
that if your problem is gluten and gluten caused your skin disorder,
even if you remove gluten from your diet, if you’re still struggling, one
of the reasons people still struggle is because they failed to address
these nutritional deficiencies that develop as a result of years of gluten
induced malabsorption and malnutrition.
And so I’m going to put up on the board for you some of the
most essential nutrients for skin health. Now this is not the most
comprehensive list because technically, all nutrients, there’s 40 different
essential nutrients and they’re all important for skin health, but I’m
highlighting some of the big ones. Some of the ones there where
research really has a greater degree of emphasis. So we’ve got essential
fatty acids, zinc, copper, selenium, iron, vitamin C, Vitamin E, vitamin D,
vitamin A, the B vitamin family, and particularly B5, and we’ll talk about
that shortly.
And then water; water is a nutrient. A lot of people don’t classically
consider water as a nutrient but water is super critical. And if your
skin is highly inflamed, you actually lose more water when your skin is
inflamed. Actually, you have a greater tendency to become dehydrated
because the skin as a barrier can’t hold that water in. And then protein,
particularly collagen based proteins, which help form the dermal
structure of the skin and help keep it elastic and strong.
So let me show you another study here, this is coming out of a recent
publication out of the Journal of Drugs and Dermatology. And you
can see here there are compelling strong relationships between diet
and disease severity and incidence of a number of dermatological
conditions. And so again, we’re just tying in nutrition, diet, and skin
disease. And so what I’ve listed here, this is a modified chart. This is
from this research study listed here. And that you can see vitamin D
deficiency linked to dry skin, linked to an increased severity of dermatitis
and psoriasis. It’s also been linked to aggressive skin aging.
We’ve got vitamin E also been linked to dry skin. And we’re talking about
deficiencies here, folks. So vitamin E has been linked to what’s known
as hemolysis of red blood cells or erythrocyte hemolysis, which leads
to bruising. So that impacts the skin. So if you bump into a wall and you
bruise very easy, you know that’s potentially a vitamin E deficiency. It
could also be a vitamin K deficiency. As you can see there, vitamin K can
lead to bruising and hemorrhage.
Copper deficiency leads to poor wound healing in the skin. Copper

is very important for the collagen in the skin to form what are called
crosslinks which make your skin very strong, durable, and elastic.
We know that iron deficiency can create an inability to properly heal.
So when you don’t have adequate iron, you can’t deliver oxygen as
effectively to the skin, to those sub layers of the skin that require oxygen
to generate energy to make new skin layers.
We know that selenium deficiency is linked to psoriasis, particularly.

We know that zinc deficiency, also linked to psoriasis but also hair loss.
We know that it can lead to rough, dry skin, dermatitis, slow wound
healing, epidermolysis, acrodermatitis enteropathica, which actually is
also linked to vitamin A deficiency. Zinc carries vitamin A, without zinc,
vitamin A can’t be delivered to the different tissues of your body. Zinc
is like the taxi cab for vitamin A, it shuttles it around your bloodstream.
So zinc, very, very important and zinc deficiency can cause a number of
different skin manifestations.
We know that riboflavin, which is vitamin B2, can cause inflammation of
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the skin, particularly around the mouth and inside the mouth. There’s
a condition called angular stomatitis, which is when the corners of
your mouth crack very deeply. We know that it can cause very, very dry
lips and very dry hair. We know it can cause hair loss. We know niacin
deficiency, the classic deficiency disease of niacin is called pellagra.
Niacin is vitamin B3 and one of the hallmark symptoms of B3 deficiency
is dermatitis. So very, very common.
We know that B6 deficiency can cause scaly types of dermatitis and

seborrheic dermatitis, which is almost like a cradle cap, where a lot of
dandruff starts to come out through the hairline. We know that biotin,
vitamin B7, oftentimes referred to sometimes as vitamin B8, can cause
skin rashes but biotin, also linked to seborrheic dermatitis and hair loss.
We know that B12 deficiency is linked to psoriasis and hair loss.
We know that vitamin C deficiency leads to easy bruising and damage

to the skin, and damage to the collagen that forms the skin. We know
that vitamin C protects the skin from oxidative aging and ultraviolet
radiation. We know that vitamin A is very critical for the turnover of skin
cells. So again, this is just an overall synopsis of these nutrients and their
role, and their function in skin health and skin repair.
And if you have a deficiency in any of these nutrients, your skin disorder
might be present as a result of malnutrition. And not necessarily as a
result of a food problem. It could also be both. So in some cases I’ve
seen where people were gluten sensitive but also vitamin A deficient.
And so there’s an old adage, everybody’s entitled to more than one
problem; your skin condition may be being caused by more than one
issue. More than one food, more than just food allergy, multiple nutrient
deficiencies, etc.
So moving on, another research study on the role of micronutrients

in skin health and function. You can see here nutrition is one of many
factors required for the maintenance of overall skin health, and an
impaired nutritional status alters the structural integrity and biological
function of skin, resulting in an abnormal skin barrier. In particular, the
importance of micronutrients such as certain vitamins and minerals
for skin health has been highlighted, and in cell culture, animal, and in
clinical studies, these micronutrients are employed for treating certain
skin diseases.
Basically, if you’ve got a skin condition, and your dermatologist has

told you nutrition is not important, fire your dermatologist and go find
somebody who’s qualified to measure your nutritional status to help
you understand how nutrition might be playing a role in your skin
illness. Now this is going to be a little science heavy, but I want to go
through some of the main skin based nutrients and just show you some
mechanisms of action. We’re not going to get too, too terribly deep, but I
just want to just show you a little bit more for reiteration.
So if you look here on the board, we’ve got a diagram on the left in figure
two there. This is diagram of retinoic acid. So retinoic acid is otherwise
sometimes known as vitamin A, retinol. And then on the top of that
diagram you have beta carotene. And beta carotene, technically is not
vitamin A, although sometimes on nutritional supplements it’s listed as
vitamin A, it’s actually pro vitamin A. So if you have a healthy gut, your
healthy gut can convert some of that beta carotene into retinol. But if
your gut is inflamed, it’s harder for your gut to do that.
So vitamin A is found in foods like liver and egg yolk, whereas

carotenoids or beta carotene are found in a lot of your, like orange, red,
and yellow colored vegetables. So again, it’s important because some
of you may be vegetarian or vegan, and if your gut is inflamed, you may
not be getting adequate vitamin A from that vegetarian diet because
your gut is inflamed, it can’t convert that beta carotene into vitamin A.
And that may be kind of manifesting as a persistence of skin disruption.
But again, back to the diagram, you can see that vitamin A, through
its reaction in the skin, it’s important because it enhances the repair
from UV radiation. So it helps uptick how your body heals and repairs
when it’s exposed to UV damage. It also reduces hyper proliferation. So
vitamin A has been studied to slow down the hyper proliferation that’s
oftentimes present in the disease psoriasis. We know that vitamin A
helps accelerate wound healing, so it’s very critical for healing of the skin
when the skin is damaged. And so again, if you have an inflammatory
skin disorder, and a vitamin A deficiency, you might you might get stuck
at a plateau where you’re not overcoming that skin disorder because of
that deficit.
Let’s move over to the right side of that diagram, you can see. Vitamin
C there vitamin C increases keratinocyte differentiation, so it helps
your skin cells differentiate and properly form. It also helps to protect
against something called trans epidermal water loss. It basically keeps
you hydrated. Remember, damaged skin loses water more aggressively.
We know that vitamin C can protect you from free radicals and some
of those free radicals again, can come from the environment, like
ultraviolet radiation.
[40:00]
But we also produce free radicals inside of us, it’s just the normal part
of how our body functions and operates. The byproduct of cellular
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respiration or cellular function is oxidation and we need antioxidants
provided to help prevent that. And this is why when you see somebody
who’s a cigarette smoker, lots of antioxidants necessary to defend them
from the damaging compounds in cigarettes.
And this is why smokers look so old, their skin gets wrinklier. It looks
older much, much earlier, much quicker because they’re creating
oxidative damage through smoking. And so they’re burning through
their antioxidants much more aggressively. Remember, vitamin C is an
antioxidant, vitamin A also, an antioxidant. So very important functions
of those two nutrients.
Moving on next to vitamin E. So if you look at this diagram, vitamin E

is also an antioxidant by the way and it helps preserve the oils in your
skin. So the natural oils that are produced in your skin, remember, oils
oxidize, and they can turn rancid but vitamin E helps to preserve those
oils. So a number of functions for vitamin E. Number one, it protects skin
from photo aging, again, damage from the sun. We know that it helps
also preserve the skin function through to antioxidant capacity.
And then we look at vitamin D. And you can see in the diagram
here, vitamin D plays multiple different roles. One of them is in the
improvement of your innate immune function. So vitamin D helps
preserve your immune system function. This is one of the reasons why
vitamin D deficiency is linked to so many different types of problems,
infections, autoimmune diseases, etc. We know that it modulates
angiogenesis, that’s the formation of new blood vessels. So when you
have a damaged blood vessel, vitamin D helps with the repair of that
and aid those blood vessels to feed your skin.
We know it also promotes wound healing. And we keep talking about

UV damage to the skin, we keep talking about photo aging, right?
Well vitamin D, most of our vitamin D actually comes from that UV
light hitting our skin. There’s a cholesterol in your skin, it’s called
7-dehydrocholesterol. And when UV light hits it, that cholesterol is
converted into vitamin D. So I want to be very clear and very cautious
with you all. A lot of dermatologists will tell you to avoid the sun.
And as it relates to vitamin D, the only way you’re really going to

get great vitamin D production is through ultraviolet radiation
hitting your skin and converting the cholesterol in your skin, the
7-dehydrocholesterol in your skin is converted into vitamin D. And so
again, many of you may have been told with your skin disorders, stay
out of the sun, especially those with a family history of skin cancers. And
in my opinion, that’s a very bad piece of advice.
Sunlight does not cause skin cancer. Sun burning does. And I think it’s
important for you to differentiate that difference. In order to treat a
lot of skin diseases, we actually use UV light because of its beneficial
production of vitamin D. So, sun avoidance, which leads to vitamin D
deficiency in many is a bad idea because of its critical role in skin health
and immune health. So you need sunshine, you just don’t want to get
so much sun that you’re burning. It’s that burning, it’s what’s called
that erythemal dose, that maximal or minimal erythemal dose where
your skin actually burns from overexposure to sun where it becomes a
problem.
But regular sunlight exposure to the tolerance of your skin is very

important for the health of your skin, and the production of vitamin D.
And especially, this is true if again, you’re following a vegetarian or vegan
diet where you’re not using animal proteins, animal meats, things like
dairy, or fatty fish or liver that contain the most vitamin D from your
diet.
You can get vitamin D from mushrooms, certainly that is a good source
of vitamin D if you are following a vegetarian diet. So again, if you are
you want to make sure you’re getting plenty of that in. But sunshine is
the best source and sunshine has other therapeutic benefits on the skin
beyond just vitamin D production. So just a side note on that.
So now that we’ve talked a little bit about the nutrients, the vitamins,
and the minerals that are important for skin health and overall skin
function, let’s dive into a few different skin diseases. There’s a few main
ones that I’m going to be talking about today. Let’s dive into acne, how
diet and acne play a role with each other. So I’m going to put a diagram
up on the board. This was a figure adapted from the American Journal of
Clinical Dermatology.
And so what we’re looking at here, if you look at the bottom of this
diagram, you’re going to see certain boxes in green, those are dietary
components. So on the left hand side you’ll see omega three fatty acids
have a blocking effect on leukotriene B4 and on insulin like growth
factor 1. And when we have a blocking effect on leukotriene before
that actually helps to modulate and regulate inflammation. This is the
same kind of leukotriene B4 that is oftentimes found in people with skin
inflammatory disorders. So we know omega three fatty acids can play a
crucial role in helping to regulate that inflammation in the skin that leads
to acne.
We know that it also regulates that IGF-1 and so IGF-1 oftentimes leads
to an increased production of androgens and that increased androgens
in the skin can cause excessive sebum production, which also leads to
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acne. So there’s a connection there. We also know that increased GI,
that’s glycemic index or glycemic load, so the more sugar, the more high
carbohydrate based foods that you’re consuming, the more insulin you
make.
The more insulin you make, the more IGF-1. The more IGF-1, the
more androgens, etc. and so we get excessive sebum and excessive
hyperkeratinization of the skin which leads to aggressive acne
formation. We know dairy can do very similar. So, dairy is very similar
to a high glycemic diet and so contributes to the skin manifestation of
acne. And so those are important.
We also know that the microbiome, so on the far right there, the
probiotics themselves can lead to a proliferation of a type of bacteria
that’s oftentimes found with people with aggressive acne. So a number
of different dietary components that you can see there that play a role
in the development of acne. So again, I say that because so many of you
have been to your dermatologist for acne treatment, and they always
want to dismiss diet as being critical for acne formation. And they want
to give you like a synthetic vitamin A.
One of the prominent treatments for acne is Accutane and Accutane is
a very dangerous drug. It’s actually noted for killing a number of people
every year and maiming a lot of people with its side effects. So if you
have a diet option, it’s not something I would really recommend that you
investigate, taking a synthetic version of vitamin A because it can get
very toxic very fast.
So let’s put up a few more studies on the board on acne and foods. So
you can see this study on the left hand side. Their conclusion was, the
study suggests that particularly dietary, glycemic index, high glycemic
index foods, saturated fat, trans fat, milk, and fish may influence or
aggravate acne development. And so again, what they found in this
particular study is that fatty fish reduced acne, and that trans fat,
unsaturated fat, milk, and high glycemic diets aggravated acne.
Then we go over to this other study on high glycemic load diets, milk
and ice cream consumption are related to acne vulgaris. So the synopsis
there is that glycemic load of the diet and frequencies of milk and ice
cream intake were positively associated with an increase in acne. So
again, diet does matter. I say this because I just see the teenagers out
there who have been told by their dermatologist, “Don’t worry about
it, eat all the ice cream you want. We’re going to take care of your acne
with antibiotics and with synthetic vitamin.” A bad idea.
And then we have acne again, these are some of the foods to avoid
based on a lot of the research. So you see in this study on the right,
this was actually a nice review. Several studies have evaluated the
significance of the glycemic index of various foods and glycemic load in
patients with acne. Demonstrating individuals with acne who consume
diets with a low glycemic load have reduced acne lesions. In other
words, less sugar, less acne.
Dairy has also been a focus of study regarding dietary influence on acne,
particularly whey proteins, responsible for the insulinotropic effects of
milk, may contribute more to acne development than the actual fat or
dairy content. So those of you that are using like whey protein shakes,
that type of thing, you really want to pay close attention to that. A lot of
these processed dairy foods too have like whey protein isolate or whey
protein concentrate, which again drives up the insulin response.
And then other studies have examined the effects of omega three
fatty acids and gamma linoleic acid. Now, gamma linoleic acid is
predominantly found in things like primrose or borage oil, very healthy
for the skin. But an individual’s gamma linoleic acid and omega three
fatty acid, people that take those in greater quantities benefit and have
less acne outbreaks. And that also includes healthy fish, eating healthy
fish. So supplementation, you can do but you should also try to eat
these things within your diet. Eating whole and real food should always
be your priority when you’re trying to overcome a chronic inflammatory
problem.
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So recent research into the effects of probiotic administration in

individuals with acne present promising results for further study of the
effects of probiotics on acne is needed. So basically, there’s some earlier
research showing that probiotics have been very, very beneficial in
people with acne. These authors were not convinced that there’s enough
research to make that claim overall 100% of the time. But then again,
when can we make that claim 100% of the time? I think it’s all about
biochemical individuality. Some people need probiotics and will respond
really well to them. Others, you can give them probiotics and it’s not why
they have acne. So again, I think at the end of the day, it always has to
boil down to a biochemical individual approach to understanding this.
But if we summarize the foods to avoid with acne, you can see the list
here; sugar, excessive carbs, refined carbs, dairy, chocolate, refined
saturated fats are all things that I would encourage you to avoid. And
the things I would encourage you to look to take as a supportive nature
would be B vitamins, particularly with a focus on biotin and vitamin B5.
And I put to the right here a study on B5. This is actually a recent study
done where they were giving 2.2 grams of pantothenic acid, which is
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vitamin B5, for 12 weeks, and it led to a 68% reduction in acne lesions in
the patients in that trial.
Also vitamin A, I’ve seen this in a number of clients that come to see
me is that when they struggle with severe acne, we use higher levels of
vitamin A, but not the synthetic version. And oftentimes that will clean
it up. Zinc can be very beneficial, omega three fatty acids can be very
beneficial, and gamma linoleic acid can all be very beneficial. At the end
of the day, though, I would encourage you, these are just generalized
recommendations. I would encourage you to work with a practitioner
who is well versed in nutrition and get the appropriate testing to see
whether or not you have nutritional deficiencies that if supported, could
help you overcome your acne.
Next I want to talk about psoriasis. So switching gears here.

Psoriasis is connected to psoriatic arthritis, which is an autoimmune
rheumatological disease that manifests with joint pain. And there’s a
connection, many people with psoriasis also have psoriatic arthritis and
vice versa. Many people with psoriatic arthritis tend to develop psoriasis.
So there’s an overlap. And there’s a genetic marker that increases the
risk for these diseases and it’s called HLA-B27. So if you suspect that if
you have psoriasis, this is a marker, it’s very simple, it’s a simple blood
test you can ask your doctor to run.
And one of the reasons why I mention that, if you have psoriasis,
you don’t need another marker to say you have an increased risk for
the development of psoriasis. But I want to share kind of a clinical
experience with you here. In my experience, people with positive
HLA-B27 generally tend to react very poorly to nightshades, so
the vegetables and foods found in the nightshade family. If you’re
HLA-B27 positive, it might be a good idea to explore discontinuing
the consumption of those nightshades to see if that can lead to an
improvement in your psoriatic condition.
You see over here on the right, we’ve got a study up on the board
on dietary behaviors in psoriasis. And so this was a patient reported
outcome survey and I’ll just read you the kind of synopsis. The
percentage of patients reporting skin improvement was greatest after
reducing alcohol. So 53.8% reported improvements in psoriasis when
cutting alcohol out of their diet. 53.4% reported improvement when
cutting gluten out of their diet. 52.1% reported improvement when
cutting nightshades out of their diet.
And as well, adding fish or oils like omega three oils, we have
44.6% improving with omega three oils. We have 42.5 of the people
improving when they added vegetables to their diet and we have 41%
improvement with oral vitamin D supplementation. And then they went
on and they further asked in the survey, specific diets with the most
patients reporting a favorable skin response were the Pagano diet,
which is kind of a modified paleo diet. But 72.2% of people following the
Pagano diet.
Now what’s interesting about a Pagano diet, one of the differences

is there’s a lot less meat on the Pagano diet. So there’s still meat
consumption, it’s just a lot less meat, predominantly no red meat,
but lamb is acceptable, among some other things. So very good
improvements in that group. Vegan diet, 70% improvement. And then
the Paleolithic diet, 68.9% reported improvement.
So those three diets all kind of right in that 70% range of improvement.
Additionally, 41.8% of psoriasis respondents reported that a motivation
for attempting dietary changes was to improve their overall health. So,
again, if you’ve got disease, if you’ve got psoriatic disease, it’s not a bad
idea to start looking at some of these diets and potentially getting your
doctor to run some tests to help you understand which diet might work
best for you. Because not only will it improve your psoriasis but it could
improve your overall health as well.
So more on psoriasis and diet. So another research study, you see here
in a previous screening study, 16% of patients with psoriasis had IGA
and or IGG antibodies to gliadin. Gliadin is a subtype of gluten, so it’s a
type of gluten found in wheat, barley, and rye. So, what these authors
are saying is that 16% of people with psoriasis had antibodies to gluten.
So their conclusion is that psoriasis patients with raised antibodies to

gluten might improve on a gluten free diet, even if they have no EMA.
EMA is endomysial antibodies, that’s a test that’s typically run for celiac
disease. So this would be kind of classified as these are people that
have psoriasis that don’t have celiac disease, or have positive lab tests
for celiac disease, but do have antibodies to gliadin, will improve or can
improve if they embark upon a gluten free diet.
Another one on fats, fasting, and psoriasis. So in this review, psoriasis

being a T cell mediated inflammatory skin disease, in severe cases, this
disease can result in insufficient nutritional status, which may even be
promoted by nutrient drug interactions. Now we’re going to talk a little
bit more about that here in just a minute. So stay with me because if
you’re taking certain medications, you’re really going to want to hear
that part.
But the general diet and single food components have been suggested
to play a role in the causation and pathogenesis of psoriasis. Fasting
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periods, vegetarian diets, and diets rich in omega three polyunsaturated
fats from fish oil have all been associated with improvement in studies.
The most likely explanation is the reduced amount of arachidonic acid
and the increased EPA or eicosapentaenoic acid intake, resulting in
a modulated eicosanoic profile. What that basically means in English
is when people take fish oil that EPA in the fish oil helps to regulate
their inflammatory response. So skin diseases of chronic autoimmune
inflammatory origin tend to respond really well with that fish oil because
it helps modulate the inflammation.
Some psoriasis patients are gluten sensitive and may benefit from a
gluten free diet. The active form of vitamin D exhibits anti-proliferative
and immunoregulatory effects and has been shown to be useful in the
treatment of psoriasis. So again, omega three, gluten free diet, and
vitamin D, based on this extensive review.
So, what are some supportive nutrients that you want to consider if you
have psoriasis? My top suggestions are vitamin D, zinc, omega three
fatty acids. And then sunshine, although technically not a nutrient, it will
support the production of the nutrient, vitamin D. And again, sunshine,
to the level of your ability to tolerate it, don’t go too long, but also make
sure you get it on a regular basis. And then I also add the anti-nutrition
support, which is fasting.
If you have an autoimmune skin condition, one of the best things that
you can do for it is embark upon a fasting strategy and there are a
number of different fasting strategies. We don’t have time within the
confines of this class to get into them all but I would just say, do some
research into intermittent fasting and do some research into three day
fasting cycles. Because both of those, in my experience, have worked
remarkably well at helping the skin clear much more quickly than if
you don’t incorporate fasting. So fasting can be extremely beneficial in
individuals.
And then for psoriasis, consider avoiding the following; so gluten,

obviously dairy, sugar, nightshades, and alcohol are the big ones that
we’ve seen be problematic. Again, generally speaking, ultimately always
test. Again, what I’m trying to do with this masterclass is give you ideas
or roads that you can travel down and experience potential benefit.
But at the end of the day, you always want to test. Get with somebody,
again, who’s qualified to do the right kinds of tests to help you
understand what you need to do with your diet and nutrition.
Let’s talk next, let’s shift gears, we’re going to go into eczema. So eczema
and dermatitis or some people call it atopic dermatitis. There are a
number of different kinds of dermatitis but we’re going to really focus
on eczema and atopic dermatitis here. So, let’s talk. So common food
allergies, dermatitis is one of those that’s triggered very, very commonly
as a result of IGE food allergies.
[1:00:00]
Now, it can also be triggered by IGG, IGA, IGM, immune complex and T
cell response reactions as well. Remember that diagram I showed you
at the beginning of this masterclass on delayed hypersensitivity, very
important to measure those.
But some of the top ones that I see; wheat, dairy, soy, egg, peanuts,
tree nuts, fish, and shellfish. Again, those are also the most common
allergens among people in industrialized countries. Now, from a
scientific perspective, I’m going to put several studies up on the
board because again, I want to emphasize and I want this to really hit
home. If you walk away from this masterclass with anything, it’s your
dermatologist was probably wrong; diet has something to do with your
skin inflammation.
So in this particular study recently published, this was actually National

Institute of Health, you can see scientists identify a unique subtype
of eczema linked to food allergies. So as long as we’ve been hearing,
eczema has nothing to do with food, here’s kind of the proof; the
proverbial proof is in the pudding, so to speak. Although don’t eat the
dairy because the dairy is a trigger for eczema.
So as you can see on this next study out of the Journal of Dermatological
Science. In their conclusion, they say, “Infants with early eczema onset,
especially within the first one to four months after birth, were found to
have an increased risk of developing food allergy at three years of age.
Our findings may contribute to better understanding of the timing of
eczema onset as potential modifiable risk factor and to defining those
who may need to be on guard for food allergies.”
So what this study is saying is that those with eczema had a greater
incidence of the development of food allergy later in life. And because
I don’t think they investigated this in the study, I would argue that it
was possibly food allergy that led to the eczema that led to more food
allergy that then was later diagnosed. And you can see this study right
next to it on the right, and their conclusion. “Eczema, across the clinical
severity spectrum in infancy, is a strong risk factor for IGE mediated food
allergy.”
So there’s this crossover. Is it the eczema that created the allergy or is
it the allergy that created the eczema? But infants with eczema were six
times more likely to have egg allergy and 11 times more likely to have
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peanut allergy, allergy by 12 months than infants without eczema. So our
data suggests that a heightened awareness of food allergy risk among
healthcare practitioners treating infants with eczema, especially if early
onset, and severe.
Then we have this study on the association between the sites of severity
of eczema and the onset of cow’s milk and egg allergy in children.
So they did a study on 289 patients, of which 81 and 111 children
had IGE mediated cow’s milk allergy and egg allergy. So a very high
quantity or high percentage of these individuals were allergic to cow
dairy, as well as eggs. The conclusion of this research study was that
the rate of IGE mediated cow’s milk allergy was high among children
with atopic disease, having severe facial eczema during infancy. So if
your child is manifesting especially with a facial eczema, according to
these researchers, you might want to suspect dairy and egg as being a
contributing factor.
I’m going to put up another study on eczema here, you can see soy
allergy in patients suffering from atopic dermatitis. Almost 1/3 of
patients suffering from atopic dermatitis are sensitized to soy without
clinical symptoms. Meaning, what is the clinical symptom? It’s the atopic
dermatitis. But other symptoms were absent. The early allergic reaction
to soy occur in a minority of patients suffering from atopic dermatitis. So
soy, again, a potential trigger for atopic dermatitis.
And I put this next one up, you see this image of baby formula because
so many babies today, depending on the mom, a lot of parents forego
breastfeeding and so they gravitate to formulas. And what’s in the
formula? Most of them contain either cow dairy or they contain soy as a
basis. So you can see in this example, the toxic ingredients; sugar, corn
syrup, maltodextrin, which is also sugar, and then casein, which is a
protein found in dairy. And high oleic safflower oil, soy oil, and xanthan
gum, which is a gum derivative of corn fermentation.
And so again, if you’re formula feeding, a lot of babies with formula,

that are formula fed, struggle very aggressively with dermatitis and
eczema. And the reason why is the formula and so then they bounce
around from formula to formula trying to figure one that they can use
that doesn’t exacerbate the existing eczema. But I would just say be
cautious around these formulas, the vast majority of them, the number
one ingredient is sugar. And this is your baby, do you want to feed your
baby predominantly sugar mixed with genetically modified corn and soy?
I mean, it’s just really a bad idea. And now hopefully you understand
that there’s a link between corn and soy and dairy, and the onset of skin
inflammation.
Let’s talk next a little bit about histamine. So histamines have been also
found to be a trigger for dermatitis and eczema. And so in this diagram,
this was actually a paper called Histamine Intolerance: The Current
State of the Art, published in the Journal of Biomolecules, showed that
histamine reactions can actually create skin symptoms. And so I’ve
highlighted those four you can see there, pruritus flush, so flushing
reaction in the skin, urticaria, eczema, and swelling are all common
symptoms associated with histamine triggers.
And so some kids again, are histamine intolerant. There’s another

study on histamines, anti-histamines, and atopic eczema. And so you
can see here, histamines together with other mediators may play a
role in the pathophysiology of atopic eczema. The increased release
of histamine from basophil leukocytes of atopic patients has been
described, as well as elevated histamine levels in plasma and skin during
acute exacerbations of eczematous lesions. So in essence, histamine is
suspected to play a major role in the development of this skin condition.
And you can see here, the treatment of dermatitis with a low histamine
diet. In this study, a low histamine balanced diet could be helpful
for dermatitis patients having symptoms that resemble histamine
intolerance, in which their dermatitis symptoms worsened after intake
of histamine rich foods, but in which food allergy tests are negative.
So this is a point of clarity for you. You may have done food sensitivity
testing, you may have done food allergy testing; the results may have
found some things but you’re still struggling with skin eczema or skin
dermatitis.
Now’s the time to turn your attention to the potential that you could
be histamine intolerant. Histamine intolerance, it’s not a test that says,
“Hey, you’re reacting to strawberries.” For example, strawberries are
a high histamine food. So you may have not reacted or had an allergic
response to strawberries, per se but because strawberries can be high in
histamine, you might react to them, or they may be contributing to kind
of a moving forward of that disease for you.
And the way that we would want to look at measuring, so if you’ve got
a histamine issue or suspect one, there’s a couple of tests you can ask
your doctor to run. One is a plasma histamine level. Plasma histamine
levels, when they’re elevated, oftentimes can indicate that your body
is not properly breaking histamine down. Some people have a genetic
mutation in the enzyme DAO, diamine oxidase and that particular
enzyme helps you break histamine down when you eat foods that have
histamine in your gut. And so if you have a genetic mutation there or a
genetic polymorphism there, you may be basically less efficient at being
able to do that.
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So that may be that you as an individual need to look at your diet and
eat lower on the histamine spectrum. And then you may also want
to ask your doctor to measure DAO directly. So there are tests that
can measure diamine oxidase to see whether you actually produce
enough of the enzyme that would be helpful for you to break down the
histamines in the food that you’re eating. So those are all tests that you
can have done or ask to have done if you suspect histamine is playing a
role in your situation. But again, histamine is one of those that you want
to investigate after you’ve ruled out all the other foods, food sensitivities
and food allergies.
You see this next study, exogamous histamine aggravates eczema in

a subgroup of patients with atopic dermatitis. So, these author’s state
food and beverages may contain high amounts of histamine and thus
may cause symptoms after ingestion. The aim of this study was to
investigate the role of ingested histamine in atopic dermatitis. Patients
with dermatitis had to maintain a histamine free diet for one week. And
here’s what they found.
36 patients completed that diet, 12 of 36 showed a significant

improvement after one week on the diet. After provocation tests, 11 of
those 12 that showed improvement showed aggravated eczema again.
So it’s pretty solid, almost a third of the individuals in this particular
study benefited from a low or actually, a histamine free diet. So again,
investigate histamine if you’re still struggling has a potential.
Now I’m putting up on the board for you, this is from a really good
research overview on the different... because histamine based foods, if
you scour the internet, you’re going to find lists on all kinds of websites
that show you which foods are high in histamine.
[1:10:00]
And many of these lists vary greatly, and there are a number of reasons
why these lists vary to such a great degree. Some research studies, when
they’re measuring histamine in food, use different methodologies. So
depending on the methodology, sometimes we get mixed reports of
which foods actually have high histamines and which ones, maybe not so
much.
But what I’ve done is I’ve put up a list of the main ones and this is based
on a major review of histamine in foods. And so you can see on the far
right side of this diagram, greater than 60% of research reports that
those foods on the far right, which are cured meats and cured cheese
and grated cheese, and oily fish, canned and semi-preserved fish, dry
fermented meat products, spinach, tomatoes, fermented cabbage,
citrus, strawberries, wine and beer, all report as being high in histamine.
And then another group of researchers or another group of studies

report that 20 to 60% report actually, in this review that shellfish, eggs,
fermented soy derivatives, eggplant, avocado, banana, kiwi, pineapple,
plum, nuts, and chocolate also have high histamine. And then some
other studies also report on milk, lentils, chickpeas, soy beans, and
mushrooms as being high histamine. So again, giving that list to you so
that you can be cautious and be aware. If you want to embark upon a
low histamine diet, you can use that as a reference or resource to help
you do that.
Now another food ingredient I should say, that has been shown in some
studies to trigger flares in eczema and dermatitis, and that’s salicylates.
And so I’m putting up a diagram on the board for you here. That
salicylates, in this particular study, in this doctor’s research department,
found that 62% that were salicylate positive had urticarial symptoms,
with 52% with eczema, IBS in 69%, migraine headaches in 62%. And then
also, behavioral abnormalities in 74%. And then just broad systemic
symptoms in 74%.
And so, important to understand that salicylate could also be a

potential trigger. And I know this may, kind of right now, seem a little
overwhelming; gluten free, dairy free, sugar free, low histamine, low
salicylate, what’s left to eat, right? So what I want you to walk away from
this class and understanding is not that you need to restrict every food,
although fasting can be beneficial, you can’t fast forever. But I want you
to understand that everybody is unique and different.
And the reason why you see so much variability in a lot of research
studies is because everyone is unique and different. And I want you to
be able to take this information and explore it in greater depth, and
compare it to your own uniquenesses and your own differences. So
again, I’m giving you a kind of a roadmap to follow, I’m not trying to
tell you that you need to avoid absolutely everything that we’re talking
about today. But I want to give you some guided direction into how food
and diet can change the outcome of your chronic inflammatory skin
condition.
Okay, so let’s talk about kind of wrapping up eczema and dermatitis.

What are some supporting nutrients that you can take that might do
some benefit or might give you some benefit? And the number one
strategy that I really want you to focus in on because there’s so much
new research coming out about the gut, problems in the gut creating
problems in the skin. And so one of the things we really want to do is
support the gut barrier. And so aside from avoiding the known foods
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and food additives, and ingredients that can damage the gut barrier,
there are certain supplements that can also do that very well.
Mucilaginous supplements. So what is a mucilaginous supplement?

These are things like marshmallow and aloe, are examples of
mucilaginous products. Fiber, certain fibers, especially gum fibers, can
be very, very supportive of GI tract health. Butyrate as a nutrient, which
is, butyrate is produced by your natural bacteria. So the lactobacillus
and bifidobacteria that are supposed to colonize your GI tract, generally,
they’ll produce butyrate if you eat adequate fiber. But many people find
that supplementing with butyrate can be very, very beneficial in terms of
supporting that gut barrier.
And then there’s L-glutamine. L-glutamine is one of the major

constituents that allow the gut barrier to heal and to seal itself. And
then we have probiotics. So again, probiotics, some people have been
on multiple rounds of antibiotics and they need probiotics or they need
some source of fermented food. But there can be kind of catch 22s
within all this net. Let me give you an example.
Let’s say you’ve taken multiple antibiotics, you developed a skin

disorder. You’re also histamine intolerant, and so you need probiotics in
your diet, but in order to get probiotics, you have to eat foods that are
rich in histamine because many of your probiotic rich foods have a lot
of histamine in. And so that’s a catch 22, right? So sometimes probiotic
supplements can be very, very beneficial in that regard.
And then vitamin D, very, very important, I’ve talked about that one
enough, I think today, along with sunshine. And then zinc, zinc is very
critical for keeping the barriers within the GI tract nice and tight. Zinc is
also critical for helping you produce digestive enzymes that help you get
the most out of your food, help you break your food down, digest it, and
extrapolate the nutrients from the food that you eat.
Okay, so next I want to talk about another topic that I really think needs
to be addressed before we wrap this up, and that’s steroids, antibiotics,
and other common medications that are used. Sometimes they’re used
not to treat a skin disorder, but oftentimes they’re used to treat skin
disorders. So I mean, raise your hand, how many of you have ever been
to a dermatologist because you had skin inflammation, and they gave
you a topical steroid? How many of you have ever been and they gave
you an antibiotic? If you had like a skin rash, or an acne situation, they
give you an antibiotic to treat it.
So what I want you to understand is some of the most common

drugs used to treat skin disorders, can actually create skin disorders
or contribute to skin disorders. I think it’s super important that you
understand that. So steroids can create dependency, and I’m going
to show you more on that in just a minute. We know that steroids
can cause gut damage. We know that steroids deplete calcium and
magnesium, can affect zinc levels and vitamin D levels. And so those
nutrients are also important for skin health. So the drug induced
nutritional deficiencies component of steroids can play a major role in
making it more challenging for your body to heal.
And we know that antibiotics can trigger leaky gut, we know that they
can cause nutritional deficiency. Remember, when you wipe out your
good bacteria, that good bacteria helps you digest your food, that good
bacteria helps you make vitamins, and that good bacteria lays down
mucus, something called mucin that coats and lines your GI tract. And
so if you wipe that out, you’re basically setting the stage for the potential
for leaky gut to kind of set in.
So, medicines used to treat skin problems can cause skin problems;
antibiotics, non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, as well as steroids can all
or oftentimes are all used in this regard. Now I’m going to show you, this
is actually out of a journal called Drug Healthcare and Patient Safety.
And so in this, they’re talking about topical steroid addiction in atopic
dermatitis. One of the common go to’s in dermatology for dermatitis is
steroid creams.
And so one of the problems with steroid creams over time is the more
you use them, you actually become addicted to them so that if you ever
try to come off of them, your inflammation, your dermatitis actually
progressively worsens. There’s actually something called burning skin
syndrome or red skin syndrome, which is a consequence of chronic
steroid use. And so the image you can see here is a gentleman who, you
can see he had inflammation before, where he was withdrawing from
the steroids.
So even though he was on the steroid and the steroid was still creating
inflammation. But he made the decision to get off of it. Remember,
long term steroid use, especially in kids, causes bone loss, it can cause
growth issues, it causes nutritional deficiency. So this gentleman,
ABCD; these pictures here that you see, this is his journey going from
before withdrawal to that second picture there being two weeks after
withdrawal.
And then that third picture there being three months after withdrawal,
you can still see, he’s still a little puffy, still a little swollen. And then you
can see 13 months after withdrawal, where he actually finally looks
normal again. So in this case, took a full year for him to overcome the
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steroid addiction and the steroid withdrawal symptoms.
And I bring this to your attention because I see this a lot in my practice
where people come to me and they’re on steroids, and they’ve been
on steroids for years. It’s just the only thing that’s ever calmed down
their skin inflammation because they’ve never tried diet or exercise or
nutrition, or lifestyle change. And so they’ve been on that steroids for
a number of years. And so in order to maintain and in order to achieve
great health, one of the things that has to go eventually is that steroid.
So many of you who are maybe looking at that point in your care as a
potential where you’re looking at, “Okay, I’ve got my diet under control.
I’m doing everything I can to be healthy. It’s time for me to start weaning
down off that steroid,” I want you to be aware that this can happen.
This steroid withdrawal can happen. Your skin can get worse before it
gets better. So you’ve got to be brave. And I would suggest working with
somebody who’s got some experience in the burning skin syndrome,
post-steroid withdrawal.
[1:20:00]
I’m going to show you, this is actually somebody that came to see me.
And so this was, I say, a story of courage because this woman, one of the
bravest women I’ve ever met, when she came to me, you can see that
first picture up there on the left, the top left, this is with a steroid. So it’s
tame but there’s still inflammation. But when we started to withdraw
the steroid, after we’d gotten diet change and nutrition, and everything
dialed in, and she started to work to taper down off that steroid, you can
see the progression from left to right.
Look at that progression. As time goes on, you can see that lesion getting
a little bit worse. And you can see, now the rash is spreading to both
sides of her face. And then you can see, now it’s spreading ubiquitously
across the suborbital region and across the nose. And then look at what
happens, her face balloons out, in that picture on the far right, and then
it stays ballooned out. And again, this is over the course of an entire
year. So these pictures have been taken as a steroid withdrawal.
So you can see how bad it gets, especially in that third picture on the
bottom row there, look at how scaly her skin has become. And then it
pops out again, and then it turns really, really red in scales again. So we
go through periods of shedding where the face will swell and the body
will start to shed those layers of skin. But ultimately, I just want you to
know, ultimately, if you can get through that... again, I don’t recommend
trying to go it alone, you would definitely want to work with your doctor.
But if you can get through all of that, the outcome can be absolutely
amazing and stunning. And you can see here, this is the same woman
in a picture with her daughters, after the fact. After all of this steroid
withdrawal, after, in her case, it was a gluten free diet. There were a
number of different food sensitivities, there were a number of different
nutritional deficiencies that were inhibiting her body’s ability to heal and
repair. But once we got it all dialed in, we can make a full recovery.
And I just want to give you that encouragement. Those of you who are
on steroids, and also that knowledge that if you’re on those steroids,
getting off those steroids can be scary, because when your face starts to
go backwards, you have this tendency to want to jump right back on the
steroid. And it’s a dangerous trap that you can get into because those
steroids long term can really, really damage your health.
Okay, I’m going to wrap this up with just a few things. I think that the
walkaway here is diet is important, vitamins, minerals, nutrients are
important; don’t dismiss them. I’ve shown you evidence today that’s
undeniable. And so I want you to take this information and run with it.
Now it’s up to you and the ball is in your court. But I want to finish with
this. A lot of people, they try just generalize things. So they try a gluten
free diet for a while. When that doesn’t fully work, they go dairy free for
a while. And when that doesn’t fully work, maybe they cut sugar out for
a little while, right? They piecemeal around; they jump around.
And I want you to understand, I’m going to go back to what I said earlier,
everybody’s entitled to more than one problem. And I’ve never seen
a case of chronic inflammatory disease where a person didn’t have
more than one problem. And typically those problems, multiple foods,
multiple nutrients, among other things. And so I know there are a
number of other really great experts that are going to be talking about
some of the other potential causes of skin disorders. But I want to leave
you with a list of lab tests where I think, if you can start here, working
with a qualified provider, I think you can make leaps and bounds in the
progress of your skin overall.
So customize your action plan. Don’t generalize it. Today, I’m

generalizing for you to give you knowledge so that you can move
forward to customize. But how do we customize that plan? We
test. So when in doubt, test, don’t guess; work with an expert. But
these are the top five tests that I’m going to give you that I think you
should run immediately, with a practitioner, to try to get some type
of understanding about how you can customize your plan, instead of
generalizing your plan.
So the first test is do a genetic test for gluten sensitivity. Rule in or out
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whether or not you need to get gluten out of your diet, because if you
do, it’s permanent, it’s lifelong, and you need to make sure that you
learn how to do that and how to do it properly. Ask your doctor to test
you for acute and delayed hypersensitivity food reactions. And you also
want to make sure that you’re testing for nutritional deficiencies.
And so I mentioned earlier, I made an allusion to the fact that serum lab
tests are not super accurate. And that’s why here on the board in the
parentheses, you’ll see lymphocyte proliferation, that’s what you want.
You want lymphocyte proliferation. This is a form of intracellular analysis
of nutritional status. It’s a much more accurate way than serum. Serum
is going to leave a lot to be desired. So this is just a more accurate way.
So ask for lymphocyte proliferation when you’re getting your nutritional
status checked.
Ask your doctor to check your gastro intestinal health, there are a
number of different tests that can be used to help you measure your
microbiome, the inflammation in your gut, whether your gut is leaking
or not, how well your gut is functioning to digest your foods. So ask for
that type of testing because the link between the gut and the skin is
undeniable. And then asked for chemical sensitivity testing. And again,
I’m not going to go into the depths of chemicals. Again, other experts in
this series are going to talk about that.
But in my experience, a lot of times where people fail in their recovery

is they’re reacting to their shampoo or they’re reacting to their soap, or
even reacting to some of the ingredients in the essential oil products
that they’re using. And so chemical sensitivity testing is a very, very
important piece of the overall picture to help bring your skin to greater
health.
So look, I hope this class has been helpful for you. I wish you nothing but
the best. And again, I’m honored to be a part of this skin disease master
class. This is Dr. Peter Osborne, signing out. Have a fantastic day.
HOW SUPPLEMENTATION
IMPACTS ECZEMA, PSORIASIS
AND OTHER SKIN DISORDERS
Guest: Cristina Marie
Cristina: Hello, and welcome to today’s presentation, the effects

of supplementation on eczema, psoriasis and other skin disorders,
unveiling the connection between vitamin C, vitamin D, and turmeric.
This information is brought to you by PuraTHRIVE, a trusted micelle
liposomal supplement company.
Who we are? PuraTHRIVE is a partnership, founded by 3 health

enthusiasts, committed to formulating supplements that actually work.
We have one simple goal, to provide high quality products that enable
people to lead healthier lives. We want people to be their best and to
empower them physically, mentally, and spiritually.
Hi! My name’s Cristina, and I’m a health researcher here, at PuraTHRIVE.

And I’m delighted to share this information and research with you today,
specific to healing your body from the inside out. As you’ve already
learned in this masterclass, eczema, psoriasis, and skin disorders affect
tens of millions of people worldwide, and is a growing problem.
Ryan, and Teddy, Dr. Z, and Mama Z, along with the other speakers,
do a great job at explaining how to heal the body from the inside out.
Which is so important to successfully managing skin diseases. They’ve
outlined the most common food triggers, and give you diet tips that are
necessary to help manage inflammation and skin flareups.
And, I’ll leave it to the experts to go into more details about that.
However, in today’s presentation, I’m going to dive a bit deeper into
healing your body with a different strategy. Another fundamental way
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to keep your body functioning at its best, is through supplementation.
I’m going to share with you today, how specific supplements are key
in managing skin health, including vitamin C, vitamin D, and turmeric.
And with that said, let’s get started to learn how supplements can help
support your body on its journey in managing eczema, psoriasis, and
other skin disorders.
Healing your body from the inside out. Healing your body from the
inside out is very important for managing skin disorders. This means,
what you put into your body has a significant impact on the severity of
your outbreaks. When you have eczema or psoriasis, reducing triggers is
a major part of managing your condition and avoiding flareups.
Scientists believe that those who suffer from skin disorders often have
food allergies, which can lead to inflammation in the body, resulting
in an outbreak. Therefore, eating a healthy diet which avoids trigger
foods is important. But, aside from diet, another fundamental way to
keep your body functioning at its best on the inside, with a reduced
inflammatory state, is through supplementation.
Beneficial supplementation. When it comes to supplements, there are

3 in particular that are incredibly beneficial. Those supplements include
vitamin C, vitamin D, and turmeric. When it comes to managing eczema,
psoriasis, or any skin disorder, you should always check with your doctor
before administering any advice, whether dietary, supplementation, or
topicals. If you suspect you have a medical problem or disease, please
consult your physician for diagnosis and treatment.
Now let’s jump into vitamin C. According to health experts, vitamin C

acts as a natural antihistamine by reducing the amount of histamine
your body produces in response to an allergen. When your body is in an
allergic state, it leads to inflammation, which can trigger an outbreak.
It’s common knowledge these days that vitamin C supports a healthy

immune system. According to the National Eczema Association, people
with eczema tend to have an imbalanced immune system. When the
immune system is imbalanced, an inflammatory response is more easily
triggered by substance in the body. It is this inflammatory response that
causes itchy, painful, rash-like symptoms common to several types of
eczema.
This also applies to psoriasis. According to Healthline, anything that

triggers an imbalance in the immune system, can cause a psoriasis
flareup. These flareups are a sign that the immune system is not
working the way it should. For this reason, it is important to keep your
immune system functioning at its best at all times.
In February of 2020, the Washington University School of Medicine

discovered the connection between a robust immune system and
reduced eczema outbreaks. In their study, they observed something
they called natural killer cells, also known as NK cells, which are a type
of immune cell. These cells play a particular role in attacking cells in
the immune system that they recognize as foreign. NK cells were made
famous within the medical community with their performance in cancer
treatments, as they successfully attacked cancer cells.
In this new study, performed by Washington University School of

Medicine, the researchers were surprised to learn that NK cells also
effectively treated eczema in mice. During their tests, they were
improving the immune system of mice and tapping into the natural killer
cells using a drug called Dupixent.
Here’s what principal investigator Brian Kim, MD, a dermatologist and

an associate professor of medicine had to say. “If you look at the skin of
mice we studied, their eczema resolves in way we haven’t seen before
with other therapies. And so far, our mouse model of eczema had
accurately predicted what we would see in human patients.”
Now, I must say, the ingredient list for Dupixent is really full of
ingredients that are hard to pronounce, including L-arginine,
hydrochloride, L-histidine, polysorbate 80, sodium acetate, sucrose, and
water.
So, if you’re looking for a natural way to proliferate these NK cells,

vitamin C might be the answer. According to a variety of PubMed
studies, vitamin C serves as a stimulator of natural killer cells. In
fact, one study found that vitamin C in high oral dose was capable of
enhancing NK cell activity up to ten-fold in 78% of patients.
NK cells have also been shown to be advantageous in managing

psoriasis. In a 2011 published journal in the National Institutes of
Health, researchers found emerging evidence that the prevalence of
NK cells aided in killing virally infected cells, and those commonly found
in skin disorders. For this reason, supplementing with vitamin C is
very important in supporting NK cell production, which in turn, aids in
managing eczema, psoriasis, and other skin disorders.
Aside from keeping allergic outbreaks at bay, and maintaining healthy

immune system, vitamin C also supercharges the collagen production
in your skin, which in turn helps to heal wounds faster, and helps to
improve your skin complexion through hydration and elasticity. In
addition, vitamin C is packed with antioxidants which protects you from
free radical damages. All in all, supplementing with vitamin C boasts
many healing benefits that can significantly help manage the different
side effects for those suffering eczema, psoriasis, and other skin
disorders.
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Moving on to vitamin D. According to the National Institutes of Health,
and the Indian Journal of Dermatology, low levels of vitamin D have been
linked to a variety of dermatological disorders. In fact, several PubMed
studies found that those with low vitamin D levels, have increased
severity of eczema symptoms, and in some cases, become strong
candidates in the rising of predisposition.
If you are not producing enough vitamin D, your immune system can
weaken, which can cause the skin barrier to break down. And the
chances for skin infection to increase. It’s no wonder why those with
eczema have increased outbreaks in the winter, as sunlight is a reliable
source of vitamin D, specifically D3.
For a while now, a common treatment for eczema, especially during

winter months, has been to expose the skin to ultraviolet light, which
essentially stimulates the production of vitamin D3 in the skin. Vitamin
D intake is so closely aligned with sun exposure that many call vitamin D
the sunshine vitamin. However, recently, the consumption of vitamin D
has been shown to be just as effective.
In a 2015 study, by the Journal of Clinical Medicine, they were seeking to

discover the correlation between low vitamin D levels and the severity
of eczema symptoms during winter months. During two double-blind,
placebo-controlled groups, the study began with both children and
adults. And they were low in vitamin D. When supplementing with high
doses of vitamin D, at least 1000 IU per day, for a minimum of 30 days,
the subjects had a significant reduction in their eczema symptoms.
[9:50]
Additionally, in a 2011 study, it was conducted to assess the effects of

vitamin D and vitamin E supplementation in eczema patients. In this
particular study, 45 patients were included in a randomized, double-
blind, placebo-controlled experiment, where each were treated for 60
days. Separate vitamin D groups and vitamin E groups, each saw an
improvement in the intensity and the amount of eczema by around 35%.
However, when combined, 1600 IU of vitamin D and 600 IU of vitamin

E, patients improved by 64%. I do want to note that an IU, which is an
international unit, is intended to measure biological effect, rather than
mass. It’s used for measurement of vitamins and other different things
specific to biologically active substances. So, this is not an apples-to-
apples comparison to milligrams. So, certainly consult your doctor when
you are trying to figure out the proper dosing.
Continuing on these studies, similarly, according to Harvard Health, low

levels of vitamin D is prevalent in those suffering from psoriasis. A year-
long, cross sectional study in Italy followed 145 patients with psoriasis
and measured their vitamin D levels. Among patients, 58% were found
to be vitamin D deficient all year long. But during winter months, that
prevalence rose to 81%. When the prevalence rose, as did the deficiency
and symptoms.
In addition, a study from 2011 found that vitamin D supplementation

can strengthen the immune system. Because psoriasis is an
autoimmune response, vitamin D supplementation can help manage
the condition internally by slowing the growth of skin cells. Another
study completed during 2007 found that 88% of 85 psoriasis patients,
treated with oral vitamin D had an improvement in their psoriasis, 28%
had complete clearance, 36% had moderate improvement, and 26% had
slight improvement.
Based on what these studies are suggesting, supplementing with a

reliable oral vitamin D is key for those trying to manage or suffering
from eczema, psoriasis, and any other skin condition. And can provide
reliable relief. Meanwhile a lack of vitamin D can lead to increased
outbreaks, and may even make people more susceptible to developing
such a condition.
But it is important to note and beware that taking too much vitamin D
can harm you. It can cause calcium to build up where it’s not needed,
like the kidneys, arteries, and potentially cause a slew of other health
problems. But, when vitamin D is taken in tandem with vitamin K2, the
K2 actually directs calcium where to go.
So, instead of calcium possibly getting stuck at places that you don’t
need it, it can be put to proper use in your bones, teeth, and other
places. Research has shown that consuming vitamin D actually increases
your body’s demand for vitamin K. So, it is very important to take these
two vitamins together.
Now we’re going to move on to turmeric. Due to turmeric’s anti-

inflammatory properties, many experts believe it can alleviate
symptoms of eczema, psoriasis, and other skin disorders. Here’s what
dermatologist Peter Lio, MD, had to say. “Turmeric in various topical
and oral forms is a staple in Traditional Chinese Medicine. It is anti-
inflammatory, anti-pain, anti-bacterial. And its wound healing properties
give it allure as a complementary treatment for eczema.”
Medicinal power of turmeric lies in its active component, a micronutrient

called curcumin, which also gives the spice its distinctive color.
According to WebMD, turmeric’s active ingredient, curcumin, decreases
inflammation in the body. Because of this, turmeric is beneficial for
managing conditions that involve inflammation. Moreover, a 2016
review of 18 studies found evidence to support curcumin use both
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topically and orally for managing and treating skin conditions like
eczema and psoriasis.
Still, keep in mind that the curcumin in turmeric has low bioavailability.
Therefore, consuming ground turmeric, like you might buy in your
grocery store, may not provide the therapeutic dosage that you need.
Ultimately, in supplementing with turmeric, you’re helping your body
maintain a healthy inflammatory state as turmeric is a powerful
antioxidant. And antioxidants neutralize free radicals, and they can help
prevent damage and healing.
So, now what? I know what you’re probably thinking. You’re going to
rush out the door, head to your local pharmacy, and purchase the
following – vitamin C, vitamin D, and turmeric. While in premise this is
a wonderful idea based on all of the data and studies I’ve been sharing
with you, but I do want to make you aware of a big problem. You see,
to get the high dosage needed to achieve the results you’re looking for,
is going to require you to choke down big handfuls of vitamins, several
times a day.
And to be honest, you’re wasting your money. Why? Well, research

suggests that your body absorbs less than 30% of the intended
milligrams in pill and capsule format. And not only that, but you might
experience new problems like bowel distress, kidney stones. Sitting on
the toilet all day is just not a good idea.
So, the key to absorption. So, how can you achieve superb absorption
through oral supplementation? Try micelle liposomal technology.
Multiple studies have shown that this delivery method can increase
the bioavailability of a supplement significantly, which means superb
absorption, enhanced potency, and the nutrients end up where they
belong.
And fun fact, this new technology comes in a unique format – liquid,
which means no more gulping down pills. It mixes perfectly with water,
your favorite smoothie, or morning juice. And frankly, you can eat
it right off the spoon. Now, I would never make you sit through this
presentation without an action plan.
So, here are some recipes you can make today. So, I just want to add
one more thing. Another benefit of micelle liposomal supplements,
being that they’re in liquid format, is that you can add them to a bunch
of delicious recipes. Now, each recipe I’m going to share with you today
does incorporate a PuraTHRIVE supplement, however you can absolutely
use a micelle liposomal or just regular liposomal supplement of your
choosing. But, I don’t think they’ll be as delicious as ours, or high quality.
All the PuraTHRIVE supplements are non-GMO, gluten-free, sugar-

free. And utilize organic ingredients whenever possible. Every product
is made in an FDA compliant and CMP certified facility. And most
importantly, every single one of our bottles go through rigorous testing
for purity, to make sure it has no contaminants or additives.
Plus, our technology is a patented delivery method that involves

protecting the nutrients within specialized fat cells. These cells act as
bodyguards, giving safe passage to these bio nutrients as they travel
through your digestive system and blood stream, delivering where
they are needed in your body. And the best part, they’re amazing, taste
amazing that is, and they’re completely sugar-free. So, without further
ado, let’s get to these recipes.
The Tropical Smoothie. So, this is absolutely delicious. I can’t tell you
how often I drink this myself. It’s pretty simple to make, in my opinion.
Calls for 1 cup of papaya, 1 cup of mango, which by the way, if you
freeze it in advance, it makes the smoothie in my opinion, a lot more
thick and delicious. A handful of spinach, 16 pumps of PuraTHRIVE D3,
1 tablespoon of PuraTHRIVE vitamin C, as well as a ½ cup of water or
coconut milk, whichever you’d like.
Throw all the ingredients into a blender, pulse until it’s smooth, and
enjoy! Honestly, like I said, this smoothie is one of my favorites. When I
drink it in the morning, I just want to teleport to a beach and just bask in
the sunshine.
Next recipe here we have is Mango Salsa. So, it is ½ pineapple, cut into
pieces, 1 mango cut into pieces, 1 red bell pepper diced, 3 tablespoons
minced jalapeno, ½ a red onion diced, 2 tablespoons cilantro chopped,
juice from 2 limes, juice from ½ a lemon, 1 teaspoon Himalayan
pink salt, ¼ teaspoon fresh ginger, finely grated. And 16 pumps of
PuraTHRIVE turmeric.
Just dice up all the ingredients, combine into a bowl, and serve.
However, I will say, I find that making this salsa ahead of time and letting
it sit in the refrigerator overnight, really gives it some added flavor and
some added kick. And I’ll be honest, this salsa is my favorite. My friends
literally beg me to bring it to every party. So, definitely enjoy this one
and I think you will really like it.
And we have an Orange Probiotic Smoothie. So, this calls for 1 large
carrot pealed, 1 large orange, ½ frozen banana, 6 ounces fresh-squeezed
orange juice. Of course, you can use orange juice from the store if you
like. 1 cup of non-dairy yoghurt. I personally enjoy coconut yoghurt. It’s
delightful. 3 dates, pitted, ½ teaspoon cinnamon, ½ teaspoon grated
ginger, 16 pumps of PuraTHRIVE turmeric, and 16 pumps of PuraTHRIVE
D3.
[20:00]
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Again, throw all these ingredients into a blender, pulse until it’s smooth,
and enjoy! Now, I’ll be honest. You’re probably thinking that these
ingredients sound pretty odd together. But I assure you, it is delicious,
and your body’s going to thank you.
So, thank you so much for enjoying this presentation with me today.
Again, Cristina here. And I want to thank you for joining me as we
explored the effects of supplementation on eczema, psoriasis, and other
skin disorders. I hope you learned a ton.
And to get more recipes like the ones in my presentation today, please
make sure to download your free recipe book by visiting Purathrive.
com/healthyskin. Again, Purathrive.com/healthyskin, where you can
get 10 more recipes like the ones I shared with you today. There are no
duplicates. Don’t worry.
And to learn more about PuraTHRIVE, please visit us as Purathrive.

com. And of course, if you’d like to take a look at all the references from
the different studies I shared with you today, you can find those here.
And you should actually be able to get a transcript of this presentation,
where you can actually click through to all these areas.
And of course, here is our disclaimer really quickly. Do not use any of
our products without appropriate medical care and consultation. And if
you suspect you have a medical problem or disease, please consult your
physician for diagnosis and treatment. Thank you all again, it’s been an
absolute pleasure. And please have a fabulous day. And I appreciate
your time.
ADVANCED STRATEGIES AND
PROTOCOLS
Guest: Sheila Kilbane, MD
Ryan: Welcome to day seven: Advanced Strategies and Protocols. And

this one is a little different. It’s not Teddy and I sitting on chairs in our
living room talking about all the stuff we’re doing. It’s talking to the
expert because we’re not the experts.
And we are certainly not equipped to talk in any great detail about the
advanced strategies and protocols that we’ve implemented for Rocky
with the help of Dr. Sheila Kilbane. Dr. Sheila, how are you? And thanks
for being here for this.
Dr. Kilbane: Yes, absolutely. I’m absolutely delighted to be here, and I’m
really excited for all of you listening because we’re going to talk about
some great things today and hopefully get you feeling a little bit better
about what’s happening and get you some tools.
Ryan: Yeah. So I wanted to set the stage and just talk about the notion
that we’ve mentioned a few times throughout this class that I think if
I had the understanding we’ve gathered throughout this journey and
especially putting it all together in a masterclass format like this, and
really hit all of these topics hard that we’ve been covering for the past six
days—this is the seventh day—that Rocky may have been able to knock
this thing out entirely naturally.
I won’t even say maybe. I would say most likely, probably been able
to knock this thing out entirely naturally from just us going at all of
these different factors. But as the case was, we knew gut healing was
important. We knew controlling inflammation was important to a
degree, not the degree that we understand now.
We knew that there was a topical component, and we needed to be
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addressing that, but didn’t necessarily understand the full extent of the-
- there’s an infection on the skin, and that infection has to be cleared.
That inflammation topically has to be kept under control. We did not
have the whole picture in our minds.
And so it progressed from what you could probably call mild eczema
to, hey, there’s really something going on here to the horrific pictures
that we’ve been posting about just how bad it got, to where he was just
tearing at himself all the time. And if he was left to his own devices for
one second literally, then he’d be scratching his face off. And it was a
really bad situation.
And that’s when you came to us, Dr. Sheila when we were at that
situation. And I’ll never forget kind of the first thing you said to us when
we were having that initial talk was, I know you can help you-- excuse
me. I know I can help you, but I don’t think you’re going to like it.
And it was true because I mean, we’re talking about advanced strategies
and protocols here, and that involved some prescription medication for
us, which we never in a million years dreamed we’d be going through
that we’d be utilizing with something like eczema. We kind of resigned
ourselves to the fact that when our first son, Ryder, was diagnosed
with stage four cancer that there was probably going to be some
conventional medicine involved.
But when we were going through something seemingly not a big deal
like eczema, and I’ve never in a million years would we have thought that
any sort of prescription would be necessary. But like we’ve been saying,
you can’t argue with the results. And before and after pictures kind of
say it all. For other people watching and for us, it’s our life that says it all,
the fact that it was more or less miserable.
Again, you can’t argue with the before and after, and we couldn’t be
happier. Here we are several months later, after working with you and
incorporating some of these things with the knowledge that we’re not
talking about being on any sort of prescription or conventional medicine
forever. But utilizing these things in the sense of we’re trying to get
things under control so that the body and the natural means and so on
and so forth can take over.
I’ve been talking too much. Would you like to speak to, I suppose, what
that’s been like for you? Because you kind of had the opposite way
of coming around to integrative medicine. You were a conventionally
trained MD who saw the benefit of natural medicine versus, I think, a
lot of people watching this venture natural enthusiasts with hesitation
towards conventional stuff. You were probably a conventional
enthusiast with hesitation towards natural stuff.
Dr. Kilbane: Well, I would say that I’ve always been more inclined toward
the natural things. And I grew up. I was the youngest of five, and I talked
about some of this. I did the Eczema 101 talk, and my parents had a
huge garden in our backyard. We didn’t have sodas. We didn’t have
sugar, cereal, and all that kind of thing.
So I was always more naturally inclined, but I didn’t-- like when I wanted
to go into medicine, I loved medicine. It didn’t matter. I mean, if you had
told me 30 years ago that I would be talking to people about nutrition or
gluten or dairy or anything, I would have said you were crazy. I liked all
things about medicine because I liked physiology. And when I finished
my training, I just started realizing that we were giving medications, and
it wasn’t working.
It was just putting a damper on the symptoms, but there was no long-
term plan for this. And so I would just listen to moms, and they would
tell me they would shift the kids’ diets, and maybe the eczema went
away, or the ear infection started to improve. And then I started to really
understand there is all this science.
And then, around 2007, I went to India, and right as I was starting
medical school, I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism,
which is an autoimmune condition. And at that time, literally the doctor
at the student health center, I remember her because she opened up
her textbook and she said, well, of all the things to get, this is good
because you just have to take a pill for the rest of your life and you’re
going to be fine.
And I thought, oh, well, that’s good. So I started taking the pill. And years
after that, I went to India, and I did a consultation at an Ayurvedic place
with an Ayurvedic doctor. And we were only there for one day, but they
said to me, if you could come and stay for a while, we could probably get
you off your medication.
And I was just like, what? Hold the fort. What are you talking about?
No, you can’t. I’ve been told this is a lifelong issue. And I’m still on my
medication because I didn’t understand all of this for a long time, but
it put that seed in my head of looking at things in a different way. And I
had to travel halfway around the world to see that.
And so, when I started to look at how we could start to help these kids
that I was seeing, it was always about using the best of both worlds. So
it was never about throwing the baby out with the bathwater because
when you’re a conventional pediatrician, you’re seeing the kids that are
coming into your office, and they might have asthma so bad that you’re
having to do treatments.
Their oxygen saturations are low. At least I don’t know of the natural
therapies that are going to bring that oxygen up and open their
airways quickly. And with medications, sometimes antibiotics are really
necessary, especially if you have a baby who has a high fever. And so
absolutely, there’s a space, in my opinion, for both. And we just use the
best of both worlds.
[10:00]
And I will also never forget. When I saw the post that you all-- we’re in
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a group together, Ryan and Teddy and I, and I saw the picture, and I
know you too. I didn’t know you well then, but I felt like I knew you well
enough to know that you wouldn’t want to do this. You wouldn’t really
want to do this other aspect, but I knew in every cell of my being--
I was pretty certain that our process could help you. I was out walking,
and we talked for an hour and I kind of laid out the way that we do it.
And I think it made enough sense to you all. And you trusted the process
that we began working together.
And I think today that’s what I would love to share with everyone kind
of the difference because there’s so much, I think, misunderstanding
about this aspect of everybody in the integrative world it’s always about
healing from the inside out, heal the gut, take out more foods.
And yes, that can be part of it, but we have to look at the skin
microbiome. And for Rocky, that was a huge aspect of it. And you can tell
that because for those of you listening, it’s that red, angry-looking skin.
And Rocky is kind of that classic example that we can have excess Staph
bacteria on the skin that can be driving that.
And we’ll talk about that. Ryan and I are going to go through some of
that today, but we have to get that infection on the skin under control so
that then we can start to make that bigger headway.
Ryan: It didn’t hurt that we were miserable and desperate.
Dr. Kilbane: True. But I also want to say, though, that it’s almost-- could
it be a blessing in disguise that you have this because now you’re
educating all these families? If it had just cleared up, you would never be
doing this summit.
Ryan: Same thing with our first son being diagnosed with stage four
cancer, I guess. Yeah. The Lord works in mysterious ways and all that.
Dr. Kilbane: You all pick the hard path each time it sounds.
Ryan: Yeah. Teddy and I joke about that often. We never choose the
easy road, and it’s made for an interesting life and quite a hard life
at times, but always seems to work out in the end. Yeah. So anyway,
enough about us, though. Do you want to get into the advanced
measures we got into with Rocky, I guess will say?
Dr. Kilbane: Absolutely. Some of the first things that we started to
implement with Rocky is-- and I’m going to do the caveat is we’re not
going to talk a lot about food in this particular video because you’ve
gotten a lot of information about it. And most people understand that
food can be part of the trigger.
And so what I’m here to say is, yes, we’ve got to address the food aspect,
and we need to address the skin microbiome while we’re addressing the
gut microbiome. There’s Dr. Aron. I’m going to tell you about Dr. Aron
briefly.
So he’s this amazing dermatologist out of South Africa. And I had a
patient years ago who we had done everything for his eczema, and
he was on a completely restricted diet. And mom was doing all his
supplements perfectly, but he continued to have these skin flares.
So she found this Dr. Aron gentleman. She’s in this closed Facebook
group and did a consultation with him. And she got this topical. So it
included a prescription antibiotic that addressed the Staph on the skin
and this little boy for the first time-- and he was getting also recurrent
massive boils on his skin. So we saw these really big improvements with
him. And so she sent me all the information, and she said, Sheila, you
got to look him up.
And so I looked him up. I emailed him. He’s super gracious. Sent me his
information and this compounded topical that he uses. And so I started
using it, and it was like the miracle. And I reached out to him, and I said,
Dr. Aron, how did we never hear about this before?
And so then you start reading about it, and you actually see that patients
with eczema have excess Staph on their skin, and it’s documented in
the literature, in the research. But I had never learned about needing to
really get that under control. The only thing that I had learned about is
that we use steroids to decrease the inflammation.
But as many of you know, if we just decrease that inflammation with
steroids, and if you’ve got this infection, you stop the steroid, and
then the eczema is going to come right back. So, I mean, with Rocky, I
remember Teddy sent me a picture within-- I mean, it was in within three
to four days. He had a significant decrease.
Ryan: Yeah, it was crazy. We couldn’t believe our eyes.
Dr. Kilbane: And when it’s with antibiotics, if we have the right antibiotic
and it’s working, it will have its effect within 48 to 72 hours. And that’s
whether we’re talking about pneumonia, ear infections, the skin.
And that’s where we knew that we were on the right track with Rocky
because we started to see those improvements pretty quickly.
And we still have a lot to do, or we had a lot to do. But if this is the
right fit for you all, you will start to know because you’ll start to see
improvements pretty quickly when you use this. And the beauty of
it is there’s a synergy, is there’s some antibiotic. There’s steroid, and
there’s emollient because some of the newer research, and it’s in animal
models, but if the skin is irritated, that can actually contribute to a leaky
gut.
So that’s why we address the skin while we’re addressing the gut. And
if we only do it the other way around, we will sometimes not find really
those big, longer-lasting improvements.
Ryan: Yeah. I know that we’ve been kind of coining it the two-way street
thing. In the natural world, the skin is the window to the gut, and you
just got to heal the gut, and the skin issues go away. But yeah, we were
certainly taking a lot of those measures and not seeing the results until
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we incorporated really getting serious on the targeted topical side of
things. Yeah.
Dr. Kilbane: Yes. So the other thing that we did right away with Rocky is
we started an antihistamine, and that’s another one. We started with just
over-the-counter Benadryl because we just wanted to get things calm
pretty quickly. We did that for maybe a week until we could organize and
talk and get this other prescription for the antihistamine that we use.
So histamine is a chemical messenger in the body that we always think
about allergies. We have these mast cells that house histamine. And
when you get exposed to an allergen, whether it’s a tree pollen or a dust
mite, or even a food, your body releases histamine. And that causes
congestion, runny nose, cough. That can also contribute to eczema
flares.
And it also contributes to a leaky gut. So what we do is we start to bring
those histamine levels down so that we stop chasing our tails because
if we are ignoring that histamine piece, we’re continuing to trigger the
inflammation. And in my experience, what families end up doing is they
keep pulling more and more food out of the kids’ diets.
And that’s where we start to run into these nutritional deficiencies,
which we talked about. We have another video that we looked at Rocky’s
labs, and he was quite low on zinc. And we have to look at iron levels
and omega-3 fat. I don’t do a lot of blood work to look at the omega-3 fat
levels, but you can do a good dietary history and know that a lot of kids,
especially in the US, are not eating adequate amounts of omega-3 fats,
which help to make up our cell walls.
So for wanting a good, intact, healthy skin barrier, we’ve got to have
a healthy cell wall. And we’ve got to have healthy cells along the GI
tract. So by decreasing that histamine, we start to decrease that gut
inflammation, and then we’re able to absorb our nutrients more
effectively and efficiently out of our food so that we can go on to create
our healthy cells. Does that make sense for--
Ryan: Absolutely. And that’s one thing that we did not want to-- we knew
that there was going to be a food sensitivity component and that we
needed to take it easy on things, but we absolutely did not want just to
be avoiding this laundry list of foods for the rest of our life. That did not
seem like any sort of--
[20:00]
And we’ve talked about this going through the different modules,
especially in the food module. It’s like, yeah, when we got people
emailing us about their experience with eczema, and they said they’ve
got it under control now, their version of getting it under control was
sending us this again, laundry list of foods that they just are now never
eating.
And it’s just for a few month old child, that did not sound like an
acceptable way for us to pat ourselves on the back and say we fixed it,
just avoiding half the foods that he could eat for the rest of his life. Yeah.
So that’s not what we wanted for him.
Dr. Kilbane: Our bodies are designed to digest and absorb nutrients,
and we have a lot of things in our environment that we’ve changed
our food. We’re not eating food. So the processed packaged foods,
absolutely, we know that those are a big trigger. We know that dairy and
eggs can be two of the big triggers.
And so I encourage you if you’re starting to pull a lot of other foods, start
to really look into these other aspects of it. And Ryan’s going to do a talk
with Dr. Aron. And so he’ll talk more about why Dr. Aron isn’t used more
in the conventional world, but it’s a huge game-changer for--it has been
in my practice. And we’re going to have some resources.
There’s an allergist out of Texas who sees patients, Dr. Van Wagner. I do
take on new patients at my practice. So there are people-- because if it’s
this serious, I do think you need the help of an integrative practitioner
who can really help you walk through this because the other aspect with
histamines is the nervous system.
I have a wonderful integrative pharmacist in my practice, Deb, and she
said, Sheila when you do this talk, make sure you really address the
nervous system because when you’re itching all the time that’s traveling
on our nervous system, our pain fibers, and it’s going to keep these kids
in that fight or flight. And when you’re in fight or flight, you’re not going
to get into good restorative sleep, which is how the immune system
rejuvenates itself.
And you are going to continuously be irritating the skin, and again, we’re
going to go back to irritating that skin barrier, so we’re not going to
have the good moisture, and that two-way street is going to continue to
trigger that gut inflammation.
Ryan: I’m glad you brought that up because we knew while we were
going through it that this can’t be good because we were up all night
with him because he was up all night. And when we talk about healing,
we were so fiercely protective of Ryder’s sleep when he was going
through cancer because we knew how important it was.
And now here we are, knowing that our other son needs to heal. But
this condition itself is keeping him up all night, and he’s not getting that
sleep. So it was a big deal.
Dr. Kilbane: Yes. And when it comes to these antihistamines is we pick
them very carefully. And we’ll use Benadryl just to begin with, but we
don’t generally use that over a long haul. So we want to be careful with
what we’re using, and you can also use some of the over-the-counter
Zyrtec and things like that.
Ryan: And I wanted to make sure to mention this. I never thought that
I would be saying something like this, but did you know you can go to,
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I don’t know if it’s just Walgreens, but I think you turn this on to it. At
Walgreens, what is it? The store-brand Benadryl or Zyrtec or whatever
the case may be, the store brand equivalent, you can get dye-free. So it
doesn’t have a lot of the junk that the named brand stuff has in it.
So, yeah, I think we were chuckling to ourselves the first time that we
went to Walgreens and got our dye-free Zyrtec or whatever it was
that, oh, well, at least we’re getting the most non-toxic thing, but yeah.
Anyway, I just wanted to throw that in there that if you are going to go
the over-the-counter route, you can find a cleaner over-the-counter and
ironically the store brand of some things like this.
Dr. Kilbane: Yes. I don’t go into drug stores very often, but when I do, I
just think, how does anybody who doesn’t have a medical degree sort
through this? Because you’re looking at the active component of a drug,
which is the generic, but Benadryl is diphenhydramine. And so you can
absolutely get the generic of that.
So that’s really controlling that antihistamine. And when I’m doing a
prescription, we usually will get it compounded so that we can get it
really clean and get it without some of the colors and the junk and the
preservatives in it. And so that was one aspect of it.
And so sleep, figuring that out, and it’s also understanding your child’s
nervous system. So is your child somebody who likes a big bear hug
that’s going to help to calm them, or are they a kiddo that they like to be
laid down and not have that? So whatever’s working with their nervous
system, we want to kind of ramp that up so we support their nervous
system.
And then the other aspect that we did together is we look at the immune
system. And so, in addition to the gut protocol that we use that really
focuses on digestion, we start to look at the T helper cells. So we have
T helper cells in our gut. We have T helper one and T helper two. And
if we go into T helper two overdrive, that’s where we see these allergy
conditions, eczema, food allergies, asthma.
And we used a different medication that is a prescription that can
start to help to balance that out. And again, that’s why this is called the
advanced practice or the advanced course because this is not something
that-- for the most part, many of you will not need this, but it was
something that we needed to do with Rocky in order to get that balance
because the ultimate goal is to have him off of everything.
Ryan: Yeah. And that’s why we ended up being okay with going with this
route, knowing that it was something that was getting us over the hump.
Yeah.
Dr. Kilbane: Yes. And that’s where I sometimes think my role as an
integrative doctor is to help people in the natural world to go, okay,
this might be okay for a period of time until we get the kids’ systems in
balance because our bodies do have that incredible innate ability to heal
themselves. Sometimes we have to do a little bit more intervention in
order to get to that space. And that was definitely the case with Rocky.
So the other aspect for Rocky is that we did need to do blood work, and
we needed to figure out-- so zinc is another. Zinc is a really big one when
it comes to eczema and gut healing, and picky eaters, for that matter.
But he had a really low level. And we needed that blood work to know
that because in order to supplement zinc-- zinc and copper go hand in
hand.
And if we just do zinc for a long period of time in a too high of a dose, we
can throw our copper levels off. So I will use zinc for a couple of months
at a time in patients, but I don’t generally use it longer than that if I’m
just using a zinc supplement unless I’m checking levels. So that then we
know how much we’re going to give, how long do we need to give it so
that we can then pull him off of it.
But that was another big aspect of it. And then we also have to because--
and Ryan, you and I actually had a couple of these conversations
because you wanted to get him off of the antihistamine as quickly as
possible. And my goal actually was to first get him decrease the Dr. Aron
cream that we were using and then start to decrease the antihistamine
because there’s a certain order that we need to do things.
And we really need to bring these histamine levels down so that when
we pull the Dr. Aron cream, we’re not going to have a flare-up and then
kind of get caught back in that cycle. I think the biggies that I would say
that often get missed in the integrative and the more natural world
would be three big things. It’s the skin microbiome, controlling the
histamine, and repleting the nutrients, really looking at blood levels and
making sure that we’re getting the nutrients back in these kiddos that
we need.
Ryan: Yeah. And Rocky’s labs were quite a mess. That was concerning to
see those results for the first time.
[30:00]
But I mean, just again, how far he’s come and looking at not only the
redness and the eczema, the typical eczema patches, and flares and all
that, but just his overall skin tone was just so ashen looking back on it.
And here we are just a few months later, and he hasn’t really had-- when
you think about people being on prescriptions for their whole lives and
having this cabinet just full of different pills and all this stuff that you
kind of think of, it wasn’t that, and we’re already down to kind of the
bare minimum.
We have already tapered off so much of this stuff too. It was four times
a day with the Aron regimen, and now it’s down to one, and we were
doing several doses of the antihistamine. Now that’s down to one. And
again, he just went from looking like he was before to just vibrant like a
baby should look like, at least we would hope he should look like. So, I
mean, we just--
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Dr. Kilbane: And then developmental spurts because he hadn’t been
pointing yet. And he started doing some of these other things, and so
much of his energy was going toward healing and fighting this infection
that’s on his skin that we kind of said, okay, we have this under control.
Now you can do the things that you can continue to develop and hold
onto weight and keep doing all the things.
And his stools. His stools had been pretty off when we started. And
that’s another thing is these kids can have-- sometimes it’s constipation,
but often it can be pretty loose. And if the stools are greasy, we know
that they’re spilling fat into their stool. And we really want to make sure
that those fats are broken down and absorbed.
And in the Eczema 101 talk that I did, and we’ll have those handouts for
you, but kind of talk you through, if I could focus on any one big thing
with nutrition, it’s always digestion and make sure that we have digestive
enzymes.
We want to break this food down, and we want to make sure that
we’re absorbing it because I don’t think there’s any one diet or any one
prescriptive way that-- there can be different things that trigger the
inflammation from different foods, but we want to make sure that we’ve
optimized the digestion in these kiddos.
Ryan: Well, yeah. And then speaking of the gut, going back to Deb, your
pharmacist on Staph, she told you to emphasize the neurologic aspects.
But one thing she said that really stuck out to us or jumped out to us, I
should say, going back to talking about the antihistamines, talking about
the fact that if there’s a continual histamine reaction, that is actually
going to keep the tight junctions of the gut open and actually prevent
them from healing.
So you can again be doing all the typical gut healing stuff that we think
of, you can be doing all that kind of stuff you want, but if you’re battling
this continual histamine reaction, then it’s going to be a real uphill battle.
So that was kind of another light bulb for us that we just would not have
thought of on our own. That’s for sure.
Dr. Kilbane: Yes. You hear the geese. And I didn’t mention this, but I
do want to say it is with the Dr. Aron-- so what happens with that Staph
bacteria is it secretes something called a Delta toxin, and that’s what
continues to trigger that inflammation. I know you’ll get into that more
with Dr. Aron.
And when it comes to the food too and I created a handout is we have
different ways that our bodies can be triggered by food. And you may
have had allergy testing from a doctor, but you may have-- so we have
food sensitivities. We have food allergies, and we have celiac disease.
And we have food intolerances, which are things like lactose intolerance,
or you can have histamine intolerance. And with histamine, there are
certain foods that can trigger histamine.
And those are foods that can be healthy, such as avocado or
strawberries. So that’s why I created a download so you can have those
lists because I don’t want you to go pulling these things, but I want you
to start to be mindful of when these kids are eating these things. If you
see flushed cheeks, flushed ears after they eat an avocado, you might
say, oh, wow, okay. Maybe we need to hold that for a few weeks. And
then let’s see where we are so that we can get back into it.
But the way that I think about this, Ryan, is generally think about a
sprained ankle when it comes to the gut and the skin. It takes a good six
months if you really sprained an ankle for it to start to feel like your own
joint again.
So if you can wrap your heads around a good three to six months of
doing these things, usually that can be a good amount of time that then
we can start weaning off some of these things. And I think that helps to
make it more doable, and it helps to give you this idea of this roadmap.
And that’s always what we want because the goal is that the kids will
be able to have some treats and stuff like that when they do birthday
parties and living in the world and that they don’t get this huge eczema
flare.
And some of, I don’t know, some of my favorite things with the kids are
also the kids that are embarrassed because they don’t want to wear a
sundress, or they don’t want to wear shorts to school because they don’t
like what their skin looks like. And usually, those are the ones that are
the more severe cases. And that’s where we can start to see these lovely
improvements with this comprehensive approach.
Ryan: Well, our kids, we’ve never been big on them having any sort of
treats at any regular birthday party, but the--
Dr. Kilbane: But you are the exception.
Ryan: Yeah. But the clothes thing, that was really heart-wrenching for
us just having to cover him up to the extent that we did. I mean, just not
out of embarrassment even, but again, if he had an exposed inch of skin,
he’d be all over red. And we wanted to see our little baby, his skin. That
was a really big deal for us is getting that back. Yeah.
Dr. Kilbane: Yes. Because when people are going like to the wet
wraps and dry wraps, and I know you talk about that, that’s where
really starting to think about this Dr. Aron and seeking out another
practitioner, if you’re having to go to that extent for a longer period of
time, and you’re not seeing improvements. Look more into the other
pieces of the puzzle.
Ryan: Dr. Sheila, is there anything we haven’t covered that you wanted
to touch on?
Dr. Kilbane: I think we covered what I had wanted to go through, and
there are lots of resources to help get you in the space where you need
to go and just keeping that big picture in mind. Food, nervous system,
skin, gut, and putting all the pieces together so that we can get these
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kids ideally eating as much as possible.
Ryan: Well, yeah, that’s certainly the goal. Dr. Sheila, well, one, I don’t
know how many times I’ve told you this, but thank for what you do
personally for my family. And thank you for being here, laying it out for
everyone.
And I know, yeah, it’s shocking to me that there’s not this kind of
comprehensive understanding of eczema. It is not just more prevalent
out there when you’re just researching online and that sort of thing,
even on natural health sites and all that. It’s not laid out in this way.
So thank you for taking the time to not only educate us but now educate
the world on how to approach this. And also from here, I think we’re
going to show a couple of videos that kind of document the journey of
after we started with you and what those months looked like, and just
kind of the dramatic improvements and taken us up to where we are
today. So I’m really excited for everyone to see those, but yeah, any
parting thoughts?
Dr. Kilbane: Yeah. And I do want to be clear that we definitely are doing
a lot of gut work, so I’m not discounting gut work at all. I mean, we’re
doing a lot of things.
Ryan: Oh, yeah. He’s got a whole thing of supplements that it’s kind of
an ordeal getting down him sometimes, but you can bet he gets them.
Yeah.
[40:00]
Dr. Kilbane: Yeah. You’re doing it. Yes. So we have lots of support, and
you can do this and check out the Dr. Aron. He’s got a closed Facebook
group. And I want you to know that we see you, we feel you, and we are
here to help continue to educate.
And you can do this, and I’m super thankful that you all are listening and
Ryan that you all decided to do this summit because it’s highly needed.
And I’ve always felt like I have this recipe in my head of how to do these
things. And I want to get it out to more people so that they understand.
Ryan: Yeah. Excited to be doing it. Lord works in mysterious ways, I
suppose would be, yeah, why this all happened. But again, Dr. Sheila
Kilbane, thank you so much again for everything you do. And for laying it
all out here like this for everyone to learn from.
And everyone, thank you for watching this. And I’m really excited for you
to see firsthand what that journey has looked like, kind of from start to
finish for us. And I think that’s going to be the next thing you see. Very
good.
Dr. Kilbane: Yes. Thank you, Ryan.
Ryan: Thank you. Bye, Dr. Sheila.
HEALING WITH ROCKY
Teddy: Rocky literally did this in a matter of five minutes. One of his
sleeves came off while he was in the backpack, and I looked up at him
while he was on Ryan’s back and screamed because of what he did to
himself.
Ryan: Gotta get you fixed up, buddy.
Teddy: Rocky, can you say hi? Hi. Can you wave? Look! Look! Look, look,
look! Look, look, look! Look, look, look, look, look! Yay. Go play? There
you go.
So you might notice that Rocky’s skin looks a little bit better than the last
time that we shared that he has severe eczema with you guys. And one,
we just wanted to say thank you, because the outpouring of support
was unreal. And if you sent us a message or left a comment or an email
and we haven’t gotten back to you yet, know that we have read each and
every one of them, and right now, all of our energy is going to actually
doing the things…a lot of the things that were in the emails, too.
So some of the things I wanted to address that we just saw as recurrent

themes is, we’ve already done the diet elimination. I have not had dairy,
gluten, soy, corn, eggs, yeast, night shades. All of that stuff has been
eliminated from my diet, and because he’s been nursing this whole time
and is only just eating barely any solid foods, he has not had any of
those foods either, because that was just a common thing. Like, “Well,
just eliminate dairy and the eczema will go away.” And, unfortunately, in
our case it’s not that simple.
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Another one that we saw was probiotics, which absolutely we’re in total
agreement there. He has been on probiotics as have I, but now we’re on
a much more tailored regimen, and I’ll get to that in a second and what
exactly we’re doing and who we’re working with.
The other thing that kept coming up was homeopathy. “Have you guys
tried homeopathy?” and, yes, that is another one that we have been
using this entire time as well. Those were the big things. Silver. I saw
manuka honey. So these are all things that we have been doing, but
obviously, we really appreciate all of the suggestions because it just tells
us how much you guys care for us and want to see Rocky healed, and
that really does mean the world.
So another recurrent theme that we saw in a lot of these emails, too,

was just how many people have been struggling with the exact same
thing that we are going through. And that really, really broke our hearts
and also just made us realize that this isn’t just an easy fix. We had
people writing in that were in their 50s, 60s, a lady in her 70s writing in
that is still dealing with eczema, despite being on a perfect diet and--
Ryan: Doing all the naturopathic-type stuff.
Teddy: Right, and being very researched. So after we made this video,
we ended up sharing it with an integrative doctor-type group that we’ve
been a part of for the last four years. And shortly after we shared that
video, this doctor that we’ve known off and on for the past four years--
we’ve met her at this event that we’ve regularly gone to--was tagged.
We ended up talking to her for over an hour on a Saturday. And one of

the first things that she said was, “I knew as soon as I was tagged that I
could help you guys, but you probably wouldn’t like it.”
Ryan: Yeah, because she knew us. That’s what she said. “I know you
guys, and I know you probably won’t like it, but I know I can help you.”
Yeah.
Teddy: “I know I can help you.” Yeah. She knew our story with Ryder,
and she’s an MD. She’s a medical doctor. She’s a pediatrician, but she’s
an integrative pediatrician. So I felt very strongly in my gut that I had to
hear her out and have her explain the tools that she wanted to use to
help heal Rocky, because I felt like not only did I feel like I wasn’t getting
anywhere, I felt like things were getting worse so quickly.
Ryan: Yeah. Yeah, they were deteriorating.
Teddy: And it was like every flare-up was building on the next flare-up,
and the time between flare-ups was turning into a day or two days,
whereas before, at least they were spaced out and then he would start
to come down a little bit. But it just seemed like just this crazy slippery
slope we were on.
So the protocol that Dr. Kilbane uses is a combination. It is very

integrative. It’s called the Aron regimen, and then she supports
Rocky with a very intense gut-healing protocol, as well as bringing his
histamine levels down, which right now are through the roof. We have
extensive labs, stool, urine. He’s being very closely monitored.
Because of the whole crisis we can’t just run out and see her, so we’re
very fortunate to be working with her remotely. She’s in Charlotte, so we
have a visit to Charlotte on our list as soon as we can, but basically, the
Aron regimen is taking the steroids and antibiotic that I hate so much,
but taking it and diluting it to basically--
Ryan: A small fraction what you’d be prescribed from a…or even a

dermatologist. Yeah.
Teddy: Or a pediatrician, because when I was first prescribed steroids, I

was told to take it, and--her words, not mine--were to “slather it onto his
body every day for 10 days, and then you have to stop because it thins
the skin.”
So with this, you’re taking the steroid and you’re basically taking a
tablespoon out of the whole tube and mixing it with 250 grams of
lotion as well as a small amount of this antibiotic ointment. The thought
process behind that, which--this is where I had my “aha!” moment--was
that there’s staph living on his skin. So the antibiotic in combination with
the topical steroid is what is actually killing the staph, because the staph
itself is what’s causing more eczema.
Ryan: Perpetuating the flare up, and making it worse and worse and
worse. Yeah, it was interesting. There’s a video on this Dr. Aron guy. He’s
I think a dermatologist in South Africa, and Dr. Kilbane was interviewing
Dr. Aron.
And he was saying that there’s…when you think of skin stuff, we’ve all
in the natural health world been taught that that’s a reflection of what’s
going on in the inside and that you heal the inside and the outside will
heal on its own. Which, obviously, is not not true, but what he was saying
is there’s even newer research out suggesting it’s more of a two-way
street, and that if you have stuff going on on the outside, then that can
actually perpetuate leaky gut and that sort of thing, and that until you
address the stuff on the outside, the gut doesn’t get the chance to heal.
It was also interesting, the antihistamine thing. Same thing. We’re

excited about antihistamines, clearly, although now we got a
prescription for really clean ones.
403
Teddy: The cleanest. It’s compounded.
Ryan: Yeah, so it’s not just going to the drugstore and getting something
off the shelf. But same thing, is when you’re having those histamine
reactions, that those are basically…I’m not the health expert, I can’t
describe it probably exactly how it should be. But that reaction is
keeping the tight junctions in the gut open and not allowing them to
heal.
So it’s these conventional things that aren’t really getting used for
conventional purposes in that they’re not just band-aiding over
symptoms. They’re being used to help assist the body in actually healing,
what we’ve been after this whole time. Yeah. It’s neat.
Teddy: Throughout this journey and everything that we’ve been on with
Ryder, I just feel so strongly about my gut and my intuition and knowing
and feeling when something just feels like the right decision to do.
And after talking to Dr. Kilbane, like I said, for an hour just asking all of
these questions and what are we going to be doing about his gut, I have
to say I felt more at peace and ready to go for this a hundred and ten
percent than with anything else.
[10:00]
Because going back to Ryder, do I believe that there’s something

completely natural and harmless that could have saved him? Yes, I do,
but given the fact that this large tumor was in his spinal cord, there
was nothing at that point that we knew of that could shrink it quickly
enough to save his life while we did everything in our power to support
him and ultimately get him half of the conventional protocol that he was
originally prescribed. So kind of ironic to be here again using integrative
medicine.
Ryan: This mixture’s what’s been studied, at the end of the day, and
what had the track record.
Teddy: Right.
Ryan: And that’s the thing, is not even all the gut support and full body
labs, all that stuff, that Dr. Kilbane’s doing, but just straight-up, this
mixture in and of itself, was made by a dermatologist, and he’s not doing
all the other stuff. And the testimonies, testimonials on this guy--you can
just scroll through his Facebook page or his website--and it’s just video
after video after video after video.
Teddy: They use the word “remission,” because eczema is another one
where they say, “Oh, it can’t be cured,” but he’s literally putting people
into remission with this. So it’s pretty amazing. I definitely recommend
checking him out.
We’ll share Dr. Kilbane’s interview with him because that also was just
another thing I watched and really made me feel really good about
everything as well. And I’ve read through Dr. Aron’s research. So Rocky
is on some very specific supplements, including some very specific
probiotics and enzymes that he’s taking, magnesium to help him poop
because he is a horrible pooper, but he’s actually been going regularly
now. I know a lot of parents struggle with how to get a lot of these really,
really, really nasty supplements into their kids, and we have the unique
experience of doing this with Ryder.
Ryan: Been there before.
Teddy: So I do feel like at least we’ve been trained up for this, prepared.
And this time around, we want to show other parents how to get nasty
supplements--because some of them are really nasty--into your kid in a
way that is a lot more positive than not doing it because it’s too difficult.
Ryan: It’s too hard. Yeah.
Teddy: The things that we’re going through, especially after just getting
the enormous response that we did from everybody that’s dealing with
some sort of autoimmune condition in their family…especially people
that are like, “I’ve been trying to do everything the right way. I’m organic.
I buy the clean cleaning products. I thought I was doing everything, and
here I am, a mom dealing with a family full of autoimmune issues.”
So I think things do happen for a reason. It just makes me feel like there
is a purpose to all of this. And even though it’s difficult and I would really
just rather not--
Ryan: Let’s have a normal life for once. It’s okay.
Teddy: Which, I do remember, right after Ryder was born, I did tell Ryan,
“I’m so happy. I just want to have a normal life with you,” but, again,
watch what you wish for. And we feel so blessed to be on this journey
and that there is actually a purpose in all of this.
So if you’re still with us, thank you. Like I have said in almost every video,
actually getting this information out there has never been more difficult,
and there’s never been more information. So I feel like there’s several
things going on where people are just getting too much of not the right
information. And I’m not saying that we’re the right information in every
case, but I do feel like--
Ryan: We’ve been able to figure a lot out.

405
Teddy: Yeah. So if this resonates with you and you feel like somebody
else can benefit, again, just help us spread the word on that, and we will
keep updating you and let you know on the next video we’ll be getting
Rocky’s labs back. So that will definitely be interesting, because we’re
taking his labs now, at the beginning, to give us a baseline.
And I’ve been advised not to freak out with them unless it’s something
really bad, which obviously, that would be bad. But right now, we’re just
going to go over them and specifically tailor his protocol to what we see
in those labs. Oh, and then we should mention, too, what you had said
about the food sensitivities. We won’t be testing for food sensitivities for
at least another few months.
Ryan: Dr. Aron and Dr. Kilbane, they’re all saying right now he’s probably
sensitive to just about everything, so all the stuff that Teddy has knocked
out of her diet, just keep doing that because those are the most likely
to cause a reaction. And this is true for all gut-healing stuff, is…at least
I feel like, and I’ve talked to a lot of practitioners that feel like a lot of
people jump the gun when it comes to food sensitivity testing, because if
somebody’s got a wrecked gut for any reason, then--
Teddy: Everything.
Ryan: Yeah. It’s like it’s not really a surprise that they’re sensitive to
everything. And just cutting that stuff out isn’t really a cure. It’s just
telling you that you got work to do on your gut. So that’s the philosophy
we’re following with this, is work on the gut first, like really go deep
and do everything you know to do, and then test and see what he’s still
sensitive to, and then make more tailored decisions from there.
Teddy: And keep following and keep testing.
Ryan: Yeah.
Teddy: So, yeah. We’ll let you guys see his amazing progress so far.
We’ve had a couple setbacks with teething. He was cutting two teeth at
the same time, but all in all, since the last video was made several weeks
ago, Rocky is a different kid, and we’re very excited to share that with
you.
Two Weeks Earlier
Teddy: We talked to Rocky’s integrative team this morning and feel very
excited and hopeful to be taking an integrative approach. It just makes
so much sense for what we’re dealing with. And if you’re wondering
what’s going on, down below what you can see is Rocky is nursing. That’s
the only way that I can sit down and talk right now.
He just really needs me pretty much at all hours of the day and night
because he’s so uncomfortable by these rashes. They’re incredibly flared
up, despite everything that I’ve cut out.
But as far as this integrative approach goes to Rocky, I know that not
everybody is going to agree with it, but for us, that’s where we have to
go with our intuition and know that we’re not doing it for everybody’s
approval at the end of the day.
We’re doing this really to find healing for Rocky, and through that,
hopefully show other people that healing this is possible, because as it
stands now, there’s no official cure for eczema, but we’re going to do
everything in our power to get there.
Making the “Aron Cream”
Teddy: This is Rocky on I guess officially day--
Ryan: One-and-a-half? Two?
Teddy: Day one-and-a-half, because we started last night, and he had

the cream on his whole body. This wound here is just one that hasn’t
healed in pretty much the entire time that he’s had eczema.
Ryan: Long time.
Teddy: So, this is Rocky at the beginning, and he still looks better. Today
is day two, officially. Definitely see improvement on the face, his arms.
All right. Today is Friday. His face is looking way better. He still has red
on it, but it looks so much better. This part of his arm that has never
healed completely in all this time.
Today is the start of day three. It is Saturday. I mean, normally during

diaper changes he’s using his legs to scratch the other leg. He is smiling
right now. Ryan is just barely holding him. So, yeah. We’re feeling pretty
optimistic.
Ryan: Feeling good.
[20:00]
Teddy: Feeling good. Oh, and he had a really good poop today. Good
job. I think that magnesium is helping you, huh? The important part of
this is the integrative and the gut healing, healing him inside, outside.
Inside-out, and outside-in.
First bath without itching!!
Teddy: Are you having the best bath ever? You’re not itchy? You look
407
amazing. Today is Sunday, also the start of day four, and we’re just
continuing to see amazing, amazing improvements.
Ryan is not holding him for this diaper change, which is amazing
because diaper changes for us meant that if one of us wasn’t around to
hold him, we’d have to get the kids to hold his arms. I just realized that
he’s not even trying to scratch his back right now too.
Ryan: No. Yeah, he’s just wriggling around and digging his back into
whatever he can.
Playing without gloves!!
Teddy: Wow. Good job. Wow. Oh. [Rocky babbling and cooing.] Today is
day five.
Ryan: Look at this guy.
Teddy: You’re looking amazing. Today is day six, and he’s still looking
amazing. Are you having so much fun? Are you having so much fun?
Look at you. Wow.
Rocky’s protocol on our fridge
His supplements
Teddy: I am so happy that today our glass syringes arrived. They came
in a three pack. This is a 10 ml syringe. It’s glass. It is obviously reusable,
but more importantly, it is not plastic. And this is what we used when
Ryder was a baby-ish to get supplements into his mouth when he didn’t
want the feeding tube
So we’re very excited, because this is going to help us get all the stuff
that we need to get into Rocky so much easier. Good. Good. The vitamin
E. This is the easy one to take. This one is so easy. I love that one. It’s
tasty. Everybody should be taking vitamin B. Come on.
Ryan: You got an inch.
Teddy: Show everybody how good you are. Come on. You got this. You
got this. Yeah. Today is day nine. We took him down to three times a
day on the mixture and two times a day on his face. Overall, he’s looking
really good.
He does have one little red spot on his face, but other than that, he’s still
looking--and obviously feeling--really good. Today is day 11 1/2, and he’s
looking pretty darn good. Wow.
Ryan: Wow.
Teddy: That’s so crazy to me, because this has been like…literally I called
it an ulcer. I can’t call that an ulcer anymore. Today is Tuesday, and he
just looks so much better. So I guess that you could say that today is the
start of week three. Right, Ryan?
Ryan: I think so.
Teddy: Is that how it works?
Ryan: Yep.
Teddy: Okay. Rocky is in the backpack while Ryan is juicing this morning,
only he doesn’t have gloves.
Ryan: Sans gloves.
Teddy: And he’s just having a good time. Are you so happy? Are you so
happy, buddy? Channing, how do you feel now that Rocky’s feeling so
good?
Channing: So good. I feel so good that Rocky’s feeling better.
Collecting Rocky’s stool sample
Teddy: Good job. So today marks exactly three weeks. Thank you. So
today marks exactly three weeks from when we got started with Dr.
Kilbane, and as you can see, Rocky is a different kid. He’s happier. He’s
playful. I’m obviously not sitting here nursing him to keep him busy,
although he would like to just play with me right now.
But we just couldn’t be more happy and hopeful for just his healing
journey. Yesterday we were able to get the stool sample sent off. This
morning, the urine. We did labs last week. So, soon we’re going to have
just a much clearer picture of what’s going on in the inside, because we
know that the cream is just such a small part of it. And he’s already had
some flares since started, especially with teething…still apparently wants
to nurse. And that’s okay. Get a really, really, really tight shot.
Anyways, we’re just so hopeful for his healing journey and know that this
isn’t an overnight fix. He’s had it for over a year now, and he had a rough
start in life with my infection and dealing with sepsis, and then him
being exposed to antibiotics. So we know that we have our work cut out
for us, but we really feel like we have the right team.
We’re so grateful to Dr. Kilbane. And on the next video we’ll be sharing
what we get back from the labs and stool and urine, so hopefully this
409
can help other families going through the same thing that we are.
Rocky is looking pretty amazing. His skin is pretty much clear, and just
even the skin tone is just this healthier shade, and the dark circles that
were under his eyes, those are getting better.
He’s sleeping better. He’s eating better. He’s popping better. Just
everything in our world with him has gotten so much better, and he’s so
much happier. Developmentally, he’s talking more. He’s standing up for
longer periods of time. He’s playing and just interacting.
To say that this has changed our lives almost feels like an
understatement, but hopefully you guys get the picture. And especially
if you or someone you know has gone through eczema, then you would
know firsthand just the amount of suffering that goes along with it. I
definitely had no idea before Rocky’s eczema just what a big deal it is,
how uncomfortable, and the itching that nothing relieves.
And because it is a two-way street to deal with, dealing with the skin
and with the gut at the same time, it just makes it so much more of a
complex thing to deal with. So early on with Rocky, within the first week
that we started with Dr. Kilbane, we had a very comprehensive blood
draw that I mentioned on my last video. And Dr. Kilbane said don’t freak
out.
And sure enough, the labs were really bad. So it’s not really surprising,
though, just given the level of histamine inside of his body. But still, I
mean, as a mom, you can’t help but freak out a little bit. So I felt like it
would be helpful to share the conversation that I had with Dr. Sheila
going over his labs.
And she was kind enough to go over them again with me so that we
could record them and share them in this video, so that if you or
somebody you know is dealing with eczema, I thought that it would just
be really enlightening to show where Rocky’s starting. Within this next
month we’ll be getting another lab draw, so we’ll be able to compare his
first labs with what he looks like now.
I mean, just judging by what he looks like on the outside, I’m super
optimistic that the labs are probably going to look a whole lot better,
especially because Dr. Kilbane has used those to determine what he
needs more of and where he’s been deficient, so that’s where we’ve
been focusing his supplementation and overall gut healing. She’s sharing
her desktop screen, so you’ll get to see exactly what his markers are on
everything.
We’re being very transparent, but know that that’s what Rocky looked
like just over eight weeks ago, and we have another lab draw coming
in the next several weeks, which I will share with you guys as well. And
obviously, we’re praying that that one looks a lot better than this one.
[30:00]
And then after that conversation with Sheila, I just wanted to share with
you what Rocky looks like now. So at the end of this video, if you just
want to see what Rocky looks like, please feel free and let us know in the
comments if you or someone you know has dealt with eczema, because
we understand. We’ve been there, and we’re finally seeing the light out
of this and just want anybody that has gone through this to experience
that as well.
Hi, Dr. Sheila. Thank you so much for taking the time out of I know
your crazy busy schedule to go over Rocky’s labs. I think it will just
be so helpful. One, I’d love to see them again just to get a greater
understanding, and two, just sharing what a baby, a fourteen-month-old
baby, with high-grade eczema, what he’s starting out looking like at this
point and just where he’s hopefully going from here.
Dr. Kilbane: Yeah. Absolutely. So I’m going to share my screen. So

Rocky’s labs, Teddy and I have already gone through them in depth, so
we’re going to do an overview. And they were pretty similar to what I
thought they would be, but we will see a lot of times in kids who have a
pretty significant eczema and who are on somewhat of a limited diet.
So his white count looks perfect. That’s our immune system. His
hemoglobin, which is, we have a measurement of our iron levels, that’s
12.8, which is also perfect. And normal levels are over here. I always look
at the MCV, which is mean corpuscular volume. So that is an indicator
of how our bodies are absorbing B12 and folate. If we’re not absorbing
those things, that number will increase.
And then I look at platelets. His platelets are a little bit elevated. You
can see 450 is the high end of normal, and he’s at 555. So platelets are
something called an acute-phase reactant. So that means that if there’s
something going on, if there’s an infection, an illness happening, those
platelets can elevate temporarily, and then they’ll go back down.
And for Rocky, we’re rechecking his labs here in the next probably two
or three weeks. So we will check in to make sure that those are coming
down. They’re not too high that we need to automatically go in and
repeat labs immediately, so those are probably just from the eczema
and they’ll…they should be coming down.
Neutrophils are the part of the white blood cells…these are the different
white blood cell lines. So there’s neutrophils, which help fight bacteria,
lymphocytes, which help fight viruses--and I’m simplifying this also--
411
monocytes, which also…for the immune system.
Eosinophils, his are quite elevated at 18, and those normally will be at
0 to 5. And those can be elevated if you have allergies or if you have a
parasite. It can be also with more serious conditions, such as cancer,
which I do not think Rocky…all of these other cell lines look really good,
so we’re monitoring him and we’ll recheck this. But, again, this wasn’t
an alarming that I felt like we needed to automatically repeat these labs
right away.
And then we’ll go down here and I’ll look at his iron. A more specific look
at what’s going on with his iron. So I’ll pop here to his total iron. It’s 58,
which is roughly in between. I like us to get that up a little bit higher, but
it’s decent. But his iron saturation--so how much iron is on the receptor
sites--is low at 14. So it’s just at the low end of normal. But I prefer that
to be closer…25-ish, 30, even a little bit higher than that.
We generally don’t do iron immediately with these kids, because what

happens is iron can feed the not-so-beneficial bacteria in the gut. So we
want to make sure that we’re giving him iron at the right time, and we
actually are pretty close to being ready to do the iron. Normally, I like
to do an iron that has something called lactoferrin in it, which is dairy-
based, and we can’t do dairy with him, so we’re going to pick something
else that we’ll use for him.
And then these other two numbers, the total iron binding capacity and
unbound iron binding capacity, those numbers, if our iron levels go
down, those numbers will go up. You can see his are starting to…they’re
at the higher end of normal, which is why I’m really happy that we have
these labs and we’re treating him, because we’ll get those numbers
corrected.
Iron is so important for our bodies, for so many of our metabolic

processes, so we want to make sure that he’s got adequate amounts
of iron, and even as importantly, we want to make sure that his body is
utilizing it well and that his gut is able to efficiently and effectively absorb
the iron from his food. Most of your listeners have heard about a leaky
gut, and that’s one of the things that happens, is we’re not absorbing our
food as effectively and efficiently as we could be if we have an inflamed
gut lining.
And then his copper levels look good. We look at the copper inside
the red blood cells and then copper levels outside the cells. And then
his vitamin D, this is…we check two different levels of vitamin D. A
25-hydroxy vitamin D, which is a standard one that most physicians will
order, and that’s perfect. I like the levels to be between 40 and 60.
And then this 1,25 di-hydroxy vitamin D, his is a little on the higher side.
That’s the more potent form of vitamin D, and generally, we look at that
discrepancy in the levels of some inflammation. So also what we have
done here is we’re holding…we held his vitamin D for a little bit because
we don’t want to push these levels very high.
As we will hold it, will help his body again start utilizing its vitamin D
appropriately, and then we’ll go back to supplementing him, since you’re
in the winter-time where you are and he’s not…because of the angle of
the sun hitting the earth, his body won’t really be absorbing the vitamin
D that he needs at this time of the year.
Teddy: A quick question about that. For supplementation, we’re holding

his concentrated vitamin D drops, but I know that there’s vitamin D in
the fish oil that we’re giving him. Is that different, how that’s getting
absorbed?
Dr. Kilbane: No. Great question, and we will keep that up because it’s
a much smaller…it’s a small amount of vitamin D, and that shouldn’t
be enough to throw these levels too far off for him. Omega-3 fats right
now for him are so important for his cell walls because we want to make
sure…so we think about everything on the cellular level.
So we want all of the cell walls, of the cells along his GI tract, all the cells
of his skin, we need those good, healthy fats because we want nice, fluid
cell walls. We want them mobile. We want nutrients to be able to go in
and out. And that’s actually part of having a good, healthy cell wall that’s
going to be part of his body able to utilize the vitamin D more efficiently
and to bind to receptor sites, as will the zinc.
So his zinc being low is…that’s pretty classic for eczema and for gut
inflammation and leaky gut. And his is pretty low. You were doing some
zinc previously, because I think you had read about that. So this just
gives us a gauge. We know we’re going to replace it. We’re going to check
his levels, and…because zinc is something you don’t want to necessarily
do over long periods of time unless you’re checking levels, because zinc
and copper go hand in hand.
In general, we don’t necessarily want to replace a single mineral, like

zinc, over a long, long period of time unless we’re looking at levels. And
that will be a big help for his gut and his skin, to get those levels normal.
Some of the things that we do use in order to help the body utilize
vitamin D are zinc, vitamin B6, and magnesium.
You all eat really well, so that’s also a big help, because you eat things
like green leafy vegetables and pumpkin seeds and nuts. That’s where
you get magnesium. And then we’re replacing the zinc and the B6 you’re
going to get from a lot of the foods that you’re eating as well.
413
And then ceruloplasmin is a protein that binds copper, and his level
was perfect. And then ferritin is the more sensitive indicator of our liver
stores of iron. And his was 23. We like that to be closer to 50, like 40-ish,
50.
[40:00]
As we’re getting his body’s metabolism a little bit more corrected…and

we will most likely use some iron with him, so we should be able to bring
those levels up. And we’ll keep an eye on those…on that one. So that is
the overview. Any other questions about it?
Teddy: No. I mean, I think that that covers everything and definitely
gives us a good starting point on where we need to go from here. So,
yeah, I appreciate you going through all of that again with me.
Dr. Kilbane: Yeah, absolutely. And you all are doing a rockstar job of
giving him all the supplements and all the things…I know it’s not easy to
do all the stuff.
Almost 3 months post labs
Teddy: As you can see, he’s really doing amazing. We just started this
liposomal vitamin C, which we have been using for Ryder as well, and it’s
by Phoenix Aurelius. We’re just starting that for Rocky. This is a natural
histamine reducer, and when we checked the lab, Rocky was really low
on zinc, so we started this zinc by Mary Ruth’s Organics.
Rocky has continually been getting the probiotics and digestive enzymes
with every meal, and these are…actually we get them directly just from
Dr. Sheila’s office. And then he also gets phospholipids and fish caps,
and there’s actually other supplements, but these are the ones I’m doing
right now.
And then also, as far as just the topical goes, what we’ve been doing for
his skin--because of that whole two-way street with the staph on his skin
perpetuating the inflammation on the inside of his body--so we’ve been
doing this topical…this is the Aron regimen.
And basically what it is, is a highly diluted steroid and antibiotic cream
inside of a lotion, which gets put onto his body. When we started, it was
four times a day. Now we’re to about two times a day, and hopefully
we’ll be tapering down to even one time a day soon.
Giving Rocky liposomal vitamin C, probiotic, phospholipids, fish oil,

zinc.
CANDIDA, HISTAMINE & PEPTIDE
THERAPY
Guest: Amber Krogsrud, BSc, ND
Dr. Amber Krogsrud: Welcome to the Eczema, Psoriasis, Skin class,

masterclass. This portion is going to be about the hormone gut
connection to eczema and peptide therapy solutions. My name is Dr.
Amber Krogsrud. I am a naturopathic doctor in the state of California.
And I’m really going to share more about my story, therapies that I used
for my own health journey, what I’ve been using in clients and patients
to help resolve skin issues related to eczema and really looking at what
is the root cause. So let’s get started.
Here’s some of the topics we’re going to cover. We’re going to look over
the role of Candida in eczema or skin conditions, Candida albicans,
specifically; that overgrowth in the gut and really, the gut issues that can
be associated with eczema and psoriasis that manifest on the skin. The
role of hormones here, so thinking about estrogen and progesterone
levels, how those affect skin, and how histamine plays a role. We’ll talk
more about histamine, that’s a really hot topic right now. And peptide
therapy, and novel treatments.
So, what are some of the therapies that we can use for this? Maybe
things that you’ve heard about, maybe things that you haven’t. BPC-157,
our body protection compound, KPV, the thymosin peptides, and low
dose naltrexone. We’ll dive into those and how they could help.
So this is my personal experience and this is really the before and after.
This is several years back, over three years ago, where I went through
my own experience of having Candida overgrowth issues, didn’t know
why. But it was really the perfect storm of stress and low stomach acid,
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and certain predisposing factors, which we’ll talk about that manifested
in this skin rash that was really all over my body at one point.
And so I utilized a lot of the conventional gut restoring protocols, didn’t

see as much traction. And then I started using some of the peptides.
So I’ll just explain my journey. And now, the after, really no issues,
I resolved that about three years ago. And so really, for me, I had
childhood eczema that resurfaced as an adult. We can talk about some
of the factors that can predispose to eczema. There is this link between
Candida and it’s not in a hundred percent of cases, but it commonly is
something that we’re seeing happen. It was what was happening in my
case.
And so, what are the factors that lead to the development of that
Candida overgrowth in the gut? The role of hormones, again, we’ll talk
about that in my personal story. So birth control, histamine, skin issues,
what’s going on deep below the surface with all of those? And then
peptide therapy, and some of the novel treatments that I used.
The role of Candida and eczema, so what is Candida albicans? Candida,

we all have it in our gut, it’s a part of our normal flora and we need it
to coexist with other species there. So it’s what we call an opportunistic
fungus. So, your gut is somewhat like a garden, it’s a great analogy,
where you have so many plots of growing space. And so when we have
certain exposures, dysbiosis, where we have a lot of bad bacteria and
not enough good bacteria, but it could also be too much fungus, and not
enough good bacteria.
And so we have growing space. And when we have antibiotics, and

certain foods that kill off those good microbiome, those good gut bugs,
then we have more growing space and Candida can really take root in
that area in your gut garden. And so we can see those symptoms result.
And Candida is really good at creating hyphy and getting into the gut
lining that it’s really hard to get rid of. We’ll talk about why.
Candida feeds on sugar and that could be the sugar in fruit. So you
may have all good intentions to be healthy, consuming lots of fruit, and
you can really create a situation of high Candida in the gut. The sugar
that’s created from fermented foods like wine and cheese. And so after
consuming higher sugar foods, fermented foods, kombucha, it fits into
that category.
A lot of people are trying to do good and say, “Oh, sauerkraut,

kombucha is good for everyone across the board,” and that simply isn’t
true. Somebody with a Candida overgrowth situation, it will make them
worse. And so after consuming sugar, we tend to get more of those
symptoms and we really feed the overgrowth situation. So we get more
of the itching, the eczema, and the brain fog, when the fungal growth is
happening in the gut.
And Candida albicans is really good at hiding in biofilms. This is a photo

that I took from the Annual Review of Microbiology. And it talks about
the adherence, the initiation, the maturation, what’s really happening
when Candida is forming in the biofilm and why it’s so hard to get rid of.
It really just lodges itself right down there. And your biofilm is just this
place, it’s like a safe haven for those gut bugs and fungus to live in the
gut. And so it’s just a bunch of microorganisms that grow on the surface.
And the interesting thing is we have biofilms in other places in our body,
not just in the gut, we actually have them on our teeth. And so when you
brush your teeth, if you do consume carbohydrates, they can tend to
grow in a biofilm. And that can lead over time to cavitations or cavities.
So we have to brush away that biofilm daily.
And Candida overgrowth symptoms. So how do you know if you have

a Candida overgrowth situation? A lot of times it manifests in brain
function, brain fog, inability to focus. How many kids with ADHD and
focus issues really just have a high sugar diet and a high Candida in the
gut? And that’s the main reason, one of many reasons why we’re having
more of these issues in kids.
Food sensitivities, more common than ever. Again, in kids, we can’t

bring nuts and all these different foods into the classroom because
of allergies. That’s really a food allergy. But food sensitivities are so
common, I see them in women and men, and kids. But it really could be
as a result of a dysbiosis sort of situation, leaky gut situation.
So when Candida is remnant in high levels in the gut, and we have leaky
gut, it tends to come along with that. When you have one you tend to
have the other. And then we develop those food sensitivities because
the food particles seep through that gut lining and then the immune
system can react to foods that we don’t want it to react to.
IBS symptoms, so that irritable bowel type symptomology, constipation,

alternating with diarrhea or more constipated, or more loose stools. We
can see the itchy, dry skin, the worst with heat. That’s really what we’re
seeing manifest with eczema. Joint pain is also a common one, especially
as we age, but Candida could be a causative factor here.
The fatigue, oh gosh, the tiredness and fatigue is also another one
because Candida is constantly producing these, essentially biotoxins.
And so we’ll talk a little bit more about that in a bit. But lots of fatigue
that we see. Intense sugar cravings, oral thrush, so that white tongue
we can see. Infections, recurring infections, so you have to be a little bit
immune suppressed in order to get Candida.
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So that’s where we can see the infections, skin and nail infections. If you
have a fungal growth on your toe, that’s maybe a bit of a clue to look
in the gut and see what’s happening with Candida. Sinus infections or
recurring genital or urinary tract infections. So all things to consider.
The role of Candida in eczema, again, so predisposing factors to

overgrowth, well, on the frequent use of antibiotics. We know that when
we get rid of all those good bugs, get rid of the bad bugs and the good
bugs all at once, and so it’s like we’ve kind of cleaned out our garden
space. So now Candida has a chance to grow. Low stomach acid, also a
huge predisposing factor that stomach acid or HCL that’s made in the
stomach has to be very acidic. And there’s different factors that can
dilute it.
Drinking cold water with meals is a way to dilute your stomach acid and
really prevent optimal digestion. So we don’t want to do that. But also,
high stress can really take a toll on stomach acid, the acidity of stomach
acid, and the adequate production of stomach acid. As we age it will also
decline. So we have multiple factors working against us there. The high
sugar, high fermented foods diet, we already mentioned that.
Frequent alcohol consumption because many of the alcoholic beverages,

they’re fermented, so they break down to sugar in the bloodstream. So,
same as sugar, essentially. What about dysbiosis of the microbiome?
Yes, so many of the things that I just listed above, those first four, really
cause the dysbiosis picture, where we have less of the good bugs and
more of the bad guys, bad fungus, bad gut bugs in the gut.
[10:00]
Also, low immune function. So if somebody has diabetes, they have a

viral load, they have a history of EBV or mono, or CMV, cytomegalovirus.
Mycotoxin illness as well, is something that we see can cause a little
bit of overwhelm in the immune system, almost like an immune
compromise. Chronic stress, we know that chronic stress contributes to
poor immunity because high cortisol, high glucocorticoids, can kill the
thymus cells.
And the thymus is that gland that’s right beneath this sternum bone,
and it really regulates our T cells and our B cells, so our immunity. So
that’s why when we have a viral load, our thymus is taxed or exhausted,
so we can end up with an immune compromised, sort of... even a mild
immune compromise can predispose you to something like Candida.
We can also test secretory IgA on a PCR stool test. You can run a
stool test and find that if the secretory IgA is low, that means our
immune surveillance is low. And so that’s also a state where Candida
can overgrow. And a lot of stool panels that I run, and when I ran on
myself, I found that low secretory IgA. So, yeah, my immune surveillance
was asleep in the gut, not able to kick the Candida out. And so fungal
infections, again, they can tend to flourish when our immune system is
overwhelmed or compromised. Chronic stress can do that.
So how do we test for Candida? Well, there’s a couple ways. These are, I
think, the highest yield. We can do that stool PCR testing. We can do the
organic acid test, which is a blood test. Sometimes you can actually do
that in urine as well. And so we can look at actually, the metabolites, a
lot of the mitochondria markers, as well as markers related to Candida
overgrowth. And so that one is really telling, because it measures just
a plethora of these different markers. We can also test antibodies in
the blood, IgG, IgA, and IgM, to look for current or past exposure and
overgrowth.
And actually, you can run a Candida DNA test as well, that’s more of
a... not the first thing that I do. Typically, I’ll run a stool panel first, but
I’ll run at least two of these because from my experience, I’ve seen
that sometimes we can see negative stool panel for Candida because
Candida is amazing at hiding. It’ll hide in that biofilm and it will not be
detected sometimes. But we can test it in antibodies in the blood and
see those are really high. So we always want to kind of do a double
check, we want to have two different testing points so that we know that
this is not escaping the test result.
How about some of the Candida toxic byproducts? So Candida also

creates something called acetylaldehyde. And one of the things that we
see with Canada is it can cause hormone imbalance issues. It can affect
really every system in the body, the brain, the gut, the skin. But when
you have these toxic byproducts, like acetylaldehyde, which is really
the same thing that alcohol is in the body, it can inhibit the tissue from
responding normally to hormones.
We also have things like ammonia, uric acid, which is really, uric acid
is high in gout. So when we start to have really, extremely painful joint
issues, we can think about uric acid being a player there. So it’s these
toxic byproducts that are actually causing so much of the issue here.
When Candida is massively overrun, we can see that brain fog, the
leaky gut, can destroy the gut, it can cause depression, anxiety, memory
problems. We can see neurotransmitter issues. We see changes in
circulation, the constant fatigue.
And again, these are pretty broad symptoms that could fit in many
different conditions. But how common are a lot of these symptoms? The
circulation, the fatigue, I see a lot of fatigue, anxiety, depression, and
memory issues as well. And if Candida is contributing to leaky gut, then
we end up with even more issues, leaky gut, leaky brain. So that can
lead to some of the changes to brain function and focus, brain fog that
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happens.
And so when Candida is in an overgrowth state, the liver becomes

overworked because the liver is really what detoxes or gets rid of that
acetylaldehyde. Just like when you drink alcohol, ethanol, your body has
to detox that. So this buildup of that acetylaldehyde and those other
toxins can actually slow down the processes in your body. So if your liver
isn’t detoxing well or it’s overwhelmed, we can see downstream effects
from that. And that can affect your hormone levels.
Energy storage in the body. So how about fat loss, weight gain? We
see compromised fat loss in this sort of a situation. Candida can also
cause, as we mentioned, hormone havoc. And so what happens is that
Candida can lower the progesterone level. It can “eat” the progesterone,
leading to that estrogen dominant picture, which we really don’t want.
We need progesterone to make GABA; that is a relaxing, calming
neurotransmitter that keeps us calm in stressful situations and helps
us get to sleep at night. And so without enough progesterone, we can’t
make enough GABA, and then we feel more anxious, we feel more
restless.
So let’s explore the histamine hormone link further, since we just

touched on it there. So how is histamine produced? Histamine is really
the neurotransmitter that is involved in the itching that happens in the
skin, we use the medical term, pruritus. So when we have eczema, when
we have psoriasis, we do get that pruritus happening. And histamine
can be responsible for seasonal allergies. We’re just showing these
three different systems, it can affect more than these, more than the
respiratory, the cardiovascular, and the GI system.
But I think about, a lot more, of the food allergens wreaking havoc in the
GI tract. So when someone produces high levels in the GI tract, actually,
and some gut bugs will make histamine as well. So if we have dysbiosis
or we have the wrong gut bugs around, they might be working overtime
to make histamine. And so that can show up on the skin as that itching.
And the high histamine or the inability to break down histamine, so,
many of these signaling molecules like histamine, we have to make
them, create them, and break them down or recycle them in the body.
And if that doesn’t happen, we get an overstimulation. So we can talk
about that as well.
And you can see on the right hand picture, there is this photo just
explaining what happens when we have the environmental immune
trigger. IgE is signaled, the mast cells produce histamine; we can get
cytokines from the basophils. Cytokines are pro-inflammatory, and they
really cause inflammation in these systems. The histamine hormone link,
again, we’re going to really talk about how to break down histamine.
So histamine comes from an amino acid called histidine, sounds close,
but it’s different. And it’s used as a communication tool, so it’s how your
cells talk to each other; cell to cell signaling. Women tend to suffer more
than men because they have higher estrogen. And we know that higher
estrogen, especially during certain parts of the cycle, can decrease DAO,
which is a central enzyme that we need to break down histamine.
So, elevated estrogen dominance, high estrogen levels manifest, and

typically low progesterone as well, we tend to lose our ability to break
it down, high histamine. You can see on the picture on the right, DAO,
on the far right hand side of that diagram. And we need a couple of
essential nutrients in order to break it down to facilitate DAO, breaking
down histamine. So we need iron, we don’t have enough iron. If you’re
anemic, it becomes really difficult to break down histamine.
And if you’re vegan or vegetarian, you tend to be lower in iron, and so

that itself and B12, as well, in a vegan and vegetarian diet. Vitamin B
six, also important for progesterone, for some of those hormone levels,
but we need it to break down histamine. Copper levels, another kind
of forgotten nutrient. We need it in a proper ratio with zinc, two to one
ratio. And vitamin C as well, we tend to think about vitamin C as this
really great tool, as an anti-histamine, and here’s why. So, it can help
break it down.
And then on the other end of this chart, you can see HNMT, and so this
is another pathway to break down histamine. Our body has kind of a
failure mechanism. If one side doesn’t work, hopefully the other will. And
if we have some of these nutrient depletions, as you can see, we can
have the issues actually breaking down.
[20:00]
So the other enzyme requires B12, vitamin B12 and vitamin B9 folate
to produce that SAMe that you’re seeing that will facilitate that second
enzyme in breaking it down.
So, really important to consider nutrient density in the diet and

nutrient depletions. These B vitamins are used everywhere, to make
neurotransmitters, to help adrenal function, liver detox pathways, and
this is one of those breaking down pathways.
And I love this photo, I share this photo from DUTCH test. It’s a test that I
run frequently with women, to run hormone levels, it’s a urine test, but it
really just shows what’s happening in that luteal phase, that second half
of the cycle in that green window that you can see. And so in that phase,
typically, estrogen will rise. And so the enzyme, DAO, we saw that in the
last slide, that will decrease, and then we get those elevated histamine
levels.
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So, the premenstrual syndrome, which is happening in that green
window, a week before your period, typically, what if that’s really actually
related to histamine? That’s the question I’m going to pose to you.
What if it’s the higher estrogen levels that are causing more of that, the
histamine response? And some of it can be, so we can see changes in
eczema and psoriasis for women during that phase, that’s why. And
so we need to focus on hormones, this is a hormone connection to
histamine as well, thinking about what’s happening. And we’ll talk about
the birth control pill and how that can impact this as well.
We know that progesterone stabilizes the mast cells. It up regulates that

DAO enzyme. It breaks down histamine, therefore, we get lower levels of
histamine and then estrogen dominance activity. High levels of estrogen
are actually symptoms potentially of histamine or mast cell activation.
So we get this vicious cycle of estrogen levels producing histamine,
producing more estrogen, and more histamine.
What are reasons of too much histamine in? Well, we can have mast
cell activation due to chronic inflammation, alcohol consumption, food
sensitivities, especially cow’s dairy, so we have a lot of hormones that
are present in cow’s milk. And so we can also be consuming some of
these histamine containing foods that include wine, cheese, sauerkraut,
smoked meats, kombucha, anything fermented really.
How about intestinal dysbiosis? Because some of the species of the gut
bacteria will actually make their own histamine. And too much estrogen,
as we saw on the previous slide, because estrogen can stimulate the
mast cells to release histamine. So again, we get that vicious cycle of
histamine and estrogen.
Reasons for not enough histamine out or histamine detox. We can have
a genetic predisposition to those enzymes, HNMT and DAO. We could
also have SIBO, which is that small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.
And this was really just starting to come out when I was in med school,
because that SIBO or that bacterial overgrowth impairs DAO, just like a
dysbiosis state.
And then vitamin B6 deficiency. So our body uses B vitamins all day,
every day for all these different biological processes. They’re cofactors
for enzymes, and enzymes will not work without them. And so, if we
have too little intake of vitamin B6, we can also have issues here,
because it’s a cofactor for DAO. Again, with iron and copper, and all
those other nutrients we looked at.
Hormonal birth control because again, it causes hormone imbalance

that acts as estrogen and progesterone deficiency. And estrogen excess
because it can down regulate that hormone or it can down regulate
DAO, which is that enzyme that breaks down histamine. Progesterone
deficiency because progesterone stabilizes mast cells and it up regulates
DAO. And so that’s why women tend to feel better in that phase when
progesterone is high, the luteal phase, and then as the estrogen rises,
then we can tend to see some issues.
What are some solutions for high histamine? Well, we can avoid
histamine stimulating foods like alcohol and dairy. We can reduce the
histamine containing foods, so that’s a lot of our sugar, our wine, or
cheese, and that can really help. So I gave you a list of the histamine
containing foods, red wine, champagne, deli meats, cheese, bananas,
these are a lot of the comfort foods. I know for me, avocado, bananas,
those are things that I crave as more of a comfort food, chocolate, red
wine. And some of the dried fruit and nuts also can do that.
Solutions for high histamine. So we can add in B6, we can do that

through foods, also supplementing. I tend to add in a robust B complex
with the right forms of B vitamins for many of the clients that I work
with. Reducing environmental estrogen, so avoid drinking out of plastics,
eating out of plastics. We know that heated plastics are even worse.
So you don’t want to put your plastic Tupperware in the microwave

and heat it up with food in it. We just don’t want to drink out of
plastic because we’re drinking contaminated things with the plastic
material. And then toxic beauty products. There’s lots of environmental
exposures, but those are just a couple of them that can impact estrogen
levels, the endocrine disruptors.
And then healthy estrogen detox. So I have actually, an online training,

it’s called The Hormone Foundation’s Masterclass. And it really walks you
through how to detox your estrogen effectively. What are the nutrients?
What are the things that you need? I test this level in all of my female
clients. How is their body detoxing estrogen?
Because estrogen is a fat storage hormone, so if we have too much

of it, not only can we have histamine issues, but we can have body
composition issues in being able to drop weight. And men need to detox
estrogen too. It’s really important for men. We forget about that but
men do have estrogen. And if they have a disequilibrium, they have too
much estrogen, they can also store a lot of body fat.
Okay, we need to protect progesterone. We can use things like

bioidentical progesterone, evening primrose oil, seed cycling, some of
the non-hormonal options for birth control. But I will talk about these
with my women. So whether that be the copper IUD, using something
like the daisy, which is a more modern tool for tracking fertility,
using condoms, using the FAM, the family awareness method when
appropriate.
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Of course, these are all individual and it depends on the woman, and
what she’s open to. But anything where we can avoid a synthetic form of
a hormone, in an IUD, in a pill, is going to fare much better for women
with histamine issues. And also B6, the reason that B6, dairy free
diets, and natural progesterone help with women’s hormone issues is
that they reduce the histamine that’s really exacerbating many of the
symptoms.
What are other solutions for high histamine? We can treat SIBO. And
that is a longer protocol, but you can work with a trained practitioner
on how to really remove that and test for that. The SIBO breath test,
histamine clearing enzymes, so we can actually give DAO, we can give
precursors, we can give the nutrients that your body needs to make
those histamine clearing enzymes.
I like to use something called histo wax or herbal blends that have herbs
that can lower that whole blood cell histamine level. And so, herbs that
are helpful here are quercetin, butterbur, stinging nettle, mangosteen,
ginger, those are all great anti-histamine sorts of herbs. And then
low dose naltrexone, and this one is a little bit out of the box but we
know it reduces the T cell and B cell signaling involved in the histamine
response. And so it can help.
So where do I start with peptide therapy? Let’s dive a little bit more into
that and some of the treatments that we can use. So the foundation of
a successful peptide treatment, peptide therapy, is a healthy immune
system and healthy gut microbiome. And that’s generally where we need
to start with most people. And so I will tend to have different phases of
care where we’re using something like thymosin alpha 1, we’re using
certain immune modulators.
We can use LDN, we can use other things as well, and then BPC-157,
subcutaneously; I like both of those. The BPC can also be done in a
capsule if we don’t like to do injections. And there is alternatives to BPC
as well, so this is just an example of something that can be done. And I
like to do that for about four to six weeks to establish that healthy gut
immune axis.
And we’ll talk about what thymosin alpha 1 does. One of the therapies
that has been used and I used for myself was something called thymosin
alpha 1. And essentially what a peptide is, to give you a little primer, is a
peptide is just a sequence of amino acids attached together to signal the
body in a certain way.
[30:00]
And our body already makes thymosin alpha 1. That’s really what
peptide therapy is, is it’s helping the body to replace some of this
signaling that’s been lost.
And so thymosin alpha 1 is a peptide produced by the thymus gland.

That’s really right behind your sternum, that bone right here. And
your thymus gland is involved in all of your immune reactions. And so
thymosin alpha 1 is responsible for the maturation of T cells, so those
thymus cells that respond in the immune response. So when your body
sees a virus, a bacteria or cancer cell, whatever it may be, your thymus is
really responsible for handling that.
And so, as we age, our thymus gland shrinks to about one sixth of the
size by the age of 60. And if you’re under a lot of stress, and you have
a very stressful lifestyle, it can shrink even faster, and we can see more
compromise to the thymus gland sooner. And so, by replenishing or
helping the body in the immune response, by sending the signal to
your body to produce more of the thymosin alpha 1 in the thymus, for
immune regulation, we can really support what we call the rejuvenation
of that thymus gland.
I like to use this in autoimmunity, in any sort of immune dysfunction.

This one has been researched for use in cancer as that is a type of
immune dysfunction. But in situations like low secretory IgA on a stool
panel, we can use something like thymosin alpha 1 to help the immune
system to respond again, to work appropriately again. And this is not
something that will boost the immune system, I don’t really like that
word because we never want to throw the immune system into a
skyrocket high response; we want immune modulation and regulation.
And that’s really what this can help with.
And so you can see at the bottom, it really strengthens the regulation.
So we don’t want to attack self, we don’t want an over reactive cytokine
response to a viral pathogen; that causes what we call a cytokine storm.
We really want immune regulation and the immune system to respond,
but not in an overactive sort of a way. So thymosin alpha, it’s an injection
that can be used for this purpose.
BPC-157 is body protection compound and this was actually discovered

and isolated in human gastric juice, so stomach acid. And so we can
find this in the GI tract, your body makes this already, it makes body
protection compound. It can just decrease as we age, again, just
like thymosin alpha 1 will decrease with age. And in more stressful
conditions when we start to see manifestations of gut symptoms, BPC-
157 may be one of the peptides that is downregulated, that’s not being
produced effectively by the body anymore.
And so we can add in something like this for gut health. And this is being
used in conventional gastroenterology clinics around the United States
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right now. And so it’s composed of 15 amino acids attached to each
other. And you can take this in an injection, a capsule, there’s a cream.
I don’t know if there’s a patch, but there’s different options, different
forms of administration. Not everybody can inject or is comfortable
doing so, so the capsule tends to be a good place to start for any sort of
gut issues.
The one thing about BPC-157 is that if there is a lot of histamine issues,
it could possibly cause more, it could exacerbate that. And so in that
event, I will use something like KPV, which we’ll also touch on soon. But
BPC-157, your body uses this, makes it already, to accelerate the healing
of connective tissue, tendons, ligaments. So when we have tendonitis,
when we have accidents, trauma, injury, a bike accident, something
where we’re in surgery or where we have an injury, BPC-157 can be
helpful there.
We also think about it in prevention of gastric ulcers because an ulcer is

really corroding that mucosal lining and BPC-157 protects the mucosal
lining. I like to use it in leaky gut because that is the breakdown of the
gut lining. IBS, also evidence for a leaky gut and breakdown of the
intestinal lining. Crohn’s disease, some of these other inflammatory
gut issues. And it can have some analgesic characteristics, so for those
experiencing pain or have discomfort due to muscle sprains, tears, or
damage to connective tissue, it can help. And also some skin burns,
we’ve actually found it to be helpful as well.
Okay, LL-37. So our body makes this naturally, again, that’s why it’s
a peptide. It fits in the peptide therapy category because it’s just a
combination of amino acids connected together. And we call this a
natural cathelicidin, our body makes this cathelicidin; it’s a part of our
immune response in the gut. So if we don’t have enough vitamin D, we
have low vitamin D levels, we cannot activate our LL-37, which means
our immune surveillance in the gut is asleep. And so we really want to
have enough vitamin D to activate LL-37.
This comes in a couple different forms. You can get it in a sublingual

drops, an injection, there’s different ways that you can get it, those are
the two most common. And it can be used in any sort of viral, fungal,
bacterial overgrowth situation because it really helps the immune
system in the gut to wake up, respond to things again.
There are certain cases that we don’t want to use it in. And so you want
to really work with a practitioner on whether this is a good option for
you. I think about certain IBD situations where somebody has IBD, that
we may not want to use something like this because they may already
have sufficient or high levels of LL-37. But LL-37 is very successful
against Candida. There’s a research study that was done on Candida
albicans, Ll-37 for Candida albicans, and it showed that it can be really
helpful in helping to eradicate that overgrowth situation.
We also know that your body will upregulate LL-37 in epithelial cells
when you have a viral exposure, and so LL-37 can really prevent the
reverse transcriptase process, which is what a virus does inside the cell
to embed itself into your genetic code, essentially, into yourself. And so
it could be helpful, potentially against some of these viral illnesses. And
it has not been researched extensively, except for this one study that
was done in the University Hospital in Sweden, where LL-37 stopped
the replication of HIV in HIV positive patients. That is pretty astounding.
So it can be used in viral infections as well, it just really hasn’t been
researched as much.
Sepsis, there was also another study in the ICU. A study of 30 people
who were dying, and there was a mortality rate of 50%. So the 50% who
had elevated LL-37 in their bodies, all of those individuals, they lived. So
if you haven’t heard about LL-37, this is an interesting one, and our body
makes it already.
KPV. Okay, so I mentioned this one previously, and this has the immune
modulating, anti-inflammatory activity of alpha-MSH. We used to
actually give alpha-MSH, we can give something called melanotan-II, it’s
another peptide that can increase alpha-MSH. And in those who have
mycotoxin illness, you can test their levels with that specialty test, find
out what their alpha-MSH or alpha melanocyte stimulating hormone,
something our body already produces in the gut. You can find out what
that level is, it’s often low in somebody with mold exposure, who has
mold illness.
And so this peptide, KPV, can be good to use in those sorts of cases
where there is inflammatory activity happening on the skin or in the gut.
And it really is three amino acids, it’s lysine, it’s proline, and valine and
that’s why we call it KPV, so those abbreviations for those amino acids.
And so we can use it in some of these inflammatory gut conditions like
IBD. We can use it in IBS, peptic ulcer disease, ulcerative colitis, plaque
psoriasis.
And I like to use it in acne, the topical version or the capsule can be
helpful. You just apply it right to the place where you have acne. And I’ve
seen some cystic acne resolve with this, and that’s a really hard one to
get rid of. What else? So we use the topical cream in the skin condition,
so topically for psoriasis, for acne. You can also use the iontophoresis
patch, I’ve seen plaque psoriasis managed between a cream and a patch
for this one. Or you might want to do a capsule and the cream. That’s
also an option. There is an injection of KPV that is now available as well.
[40:00]
And low dose naltrexone. This is becoming more utilized among
alternative practitioners and conventional practitioners. Low dose
427
naltrexone is the same thing as naltrexone, we just give it in a really
small dose. But naltrexone was given in 50 milligram amounts a long
time ago, and we were using it for addiction. And we actually just started
experimenting with what a low dose, like one milligram instead of 50
milligrams, would do in the body, and we started to see some pretty
profound changes in results.
So, many of the chronic pain, depression, fibromyalgia, autoimmune

conditions, we can actually see the level of endorphins that are being
produced in many of these conditions have been found to produce low
levels of natural endorphins in the brain. And we need those endorphins
to fight pain and to fight inflammation. So low dose naltrexone is a way
to biohack or help the body to adapt into producing more endorphins.
And it’s an inhibitor of that opioid receptor, so there’s no narcotic

effect. It’s almost identical to the endorphins that our own body makes,
which are called met-enkephalin. And you can research and look into
met-enkephalin more, or opioid growth factor, OGF. And the low dose
naltrexone binds to the endorphin receptors for about one, one and a
half hours. And so that blockade will last for about four to six hours in
the night, once it’s bound.
And then the effects of LDN are pain relief, anti-inflammatory. So when
we see the immune system that is dysfunctional and reacting to self,
so I like to use this in more of the autoimmune cases, chronic pain,
depression, but I find it can be helpful in some of the skin inflammation
as well, when we have an overactive histamine response that’s
happening. And it can increase your production of your own endorphins.
So mood is one of the benefits that we tend to see with using something
like this.
And the other big question is, can low dose naltrexone or LDN block
mast cells and stop the release of histamine? Great question. I’m glad
you asked. So there’s no current studies on using LDN for MCAS or for
elevated histamine. But what we do know is that LDN decreases T cell
activity, the over activity of T cells, and T cells definitely activate those
mast cells, which can contribute to histamine.
And in addition, antibodies can also activate mast cells, that mast cell
activation syndrome, MCAS. And LDN can reduce that B cell activity
that’s involved there. So hence, we think it could reduce the antibody
stimulated mast cell activity. And so for those reasons, LDN could be
helpful. And I actually use LDN, myself as an adjunctive treatment, not
as a standalone, but it can be helpful, an adjunct to some of these other
things.
And really, this is the quote that I love to share because the body heals
itself if we give it the right conditions for healing. And the peptide
therapy and a lot of the options that we talked about, changing the
diet, what’s contributing to histamine, looking at root cause of hormone
regulation, we really need to give the body what it needs. Some of these
nutrients, iron, copper, vitamin C, so that the conditions can be right and
the body will thrive in that state.
Here’s a sample Candida, eczema treatment plan, something that I

tend to incorporate. Removing those fermented foods, again, sugar,
alcohol, sauerkraut, the cheese, pulling those out. Adding in things like
lemon before meals, sometimes apple cider vinegar. You can also take
something called betaine HCl, digestive enzymes. Really looking at,
how do we improve the digestive process, so things like Candida can
overgrow downstream?
And then I like to use something called the Kill, Bind, Sweat protocol.
And this is not my protocol, this is Dr. Jess, MD, who created this, but it
really involves sweating, sauna, and skin brushing, any sort of detox as
a part of this. You could be working out, you could take a hot bath, you
could actually sit in a sauna, you could do skin brushing. We’re just really
promoting the body detoxing through the skin, through sweating.
And then reducing stress is a really critical one because when we’re
highly stressed and we’re eating in a sympathetic state when we’re
eating our meals, then we tend to have poor digestion, poor stomach
acid, and low HCl levels that can contribute to the overgrowth situation.
Again, so here’s more of the kill and the bind that I will do in that KBS
protocol by Dr. Jess, MD, this is not my protocol. But I think it can be
helpful here. So we do some of those killing herbs or different things like
LL-37 that can really fight against Candida.
I like to do that with binders and I listed some of the binders that I like
to use, Quicksilver Scientific, their Ultra Binder . CellCore has a great
®
biotoxin binder. And you really want to be careful about when you take
these because you don’t want to take them with a meal. You want to
take them on an empty stomach 30 minutes before food or two hours
after. It seems to be really strategic when you do this KBS protocol.
And so we take the killing herbs, and then we want to take the binders,
and then we want to sweat; that’s the protocol. And we can use certain
things for immune regulation that we already talked about, the thymosin
alpha; the low dose naltrexone can be really helpful here too.
And so more information on peptide therapy and hormones, and to

work with me, here’s a link to book an appointment. And here’s the
topics that I talk about, and I like to treat and really address. I talked
about hormone health for younger women, cortisol and adrenal issues,
insomnia, birth control, alternative forms of contraception, bioidentical
hormones, blood sugar dysregulation. Also, the histamine and MCAS,
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the mast cell activation.
Mitochondrial health is a big one that I really focus on, as well as

hormones and the link to cognitive health. Gut dysbiosis and Candida,
as we talked about a lot today, immune dysregulation, we also touched
on that, and then autoimmunity. And that’s really what I see a lot of, and
love to share with the community. So much of what I do is education
and I love that part of it.
And here’s how to connect with me, you can find me on my website,
which is dramberND.com. The Peptide Doc on YouTube. You can also
find me @drambernd or @peptiderx on Instagram. And if you want to
learn more about peptides and some of the novel treatments, you can
join our Facebook group, which is Peptide Rx: Recreate Your Health. You
can look that up on Facebook, just search for that and you can join the
group, and there’s lots of free PDFs and information there. Thank you so
much for tuning in and enjoy the rest of the masterclass.
SOLUTIONS FOR SKIN CANCER
Guest: Nathan Crane
Nathan: Hello and welcome to The Shocking Truth About Skin Cancer:
How to Prevent and Reverse it Naturally. I’m Nathan Crane. I’m really
excited you’re joining me for this presentation. So, let’s go ahead and
dive right in. I am going to share my screen here. Got a lot of really
powerful and pertinent strategic information to share with you. So, feel
free to take notes. And here we go.
So, the reality is, we’ve all heard that knowledge is power. But the truth
is, knowledge is only power when it’s applied effectively. Yes, we need
to know what’s going on. We need to have knowledge. We need to
understand things at a scientific level, at a logical level, at a reasonable
level. But, at the same time, if we don’t apply it, or know how to apply
it effectively, then we have no power at all, especially when it comes to
ourselves, our health. And taking back control of our health, especially
with cancer.
So, the truth is, the more you know about cancer, the more you can
protect yourself and your family, help your body heal, and live a longer
and healthier life. But as I mentioned, knowledge by itself is not power.
It’s only powerful to you if you apply it, and apply it effectively. And that’s
what this presentation is all about.
So, here’s what we’re going to cover in today’s masterclass. We’re going
to talk about what actually is cancer. What is skin cancer, the different
forms of skin cancer. What actually causes skin cancer. The myths about
the sun and skin cancer, some things you probably didn’t know or
haven’t heard before.
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We’re going to talk about the truth about sunscreen and what you need
to know about sunscreen. We’re going to talk about the proven causes
of cancer, the natural and proven ingredients for skin cancer, and how
you can prevent and reverse all cancer.
So, it’s a lot of information that we’re going to cover in a short amount of
time. And I’m going to do my best to give you my full attention, my full
energy, my last 15 years of experience in the health field. So, I encourage
you to really follow along to the end. Turn off distractions. Turn off
your phone. Really focus and pay attention because there’s some life
changing, potentially life saving information I’m about to share with you.
So, just a quick little background. My name’s Nathan Crane. I was

very sick. And I grew up addicted to drugs and alcohol. And I was very
unhappy. I was a teenager that was homeless. I was lost. I was confused.
I was angry. I was upset. I was headed towards death. I was headed
towards 6-feet under. Nobody thought I was going to make it past 18
years old.
I know it’s hard to believe today. Today I’m a completely different

person. I am now happy. I’m healthy. I have a great family. A wife and
2 beautiful kids. I have great relationships with my parents now that I
didn’t use to have. And I get to support and serve thousands of people
around the world, how to get healthy, take back control of their health.
How to prevent/reverse cancer. And how to love longer, healthier,
happier lives.
Many of the things that I’ve learned over the years have been through
my own failures. I’ve been through my own learning experiences.
But from having great guides, and mentors, and experts in my life.
And so, over the last 15 years, actually since I turned around 18 years
old, which is when I really turned my life around, I’ve been studying
and researching. And interviewing the top experts in the world from
personal development, spirituality, to integrative medicine, natural
medicine, and everything in between.
I’ve done hundreds of programs and interviews with world-leading

experts on everything you can imagine, from health, and healing,
to fasting, to diet, nutrition, and meditation, to energy healing, and
medicinal movement, and you name it.
And it was about 8 years ago when my grandfather passed away from
cancer. Not only cancer itself, but really the conventional treatment of
cancer that set me down this path of just being totally passionate and
crazy about learning everything I could about cancer and helping as
many people around the world dealing with cancer as possible.
So, I started producing conferences and summits. I started interviewing
world-leading experts and cancer conquerors. I produced a
documentary that’s now won over 20 awards at this point, and has been
distributed globally. I just did the Conquering Cancer Summit. I have a
Becoming Cancer-Free Masterclass coming up. I’m writing a book about
cancer.
I’ve just been so passionate about it because once I learned what you’re
about to learn, I realized you don’t have to be afraid of the cancer. And
once you know what cancer is, what causes it, and what we need to do
to prevent and reverse it, then you’re empowered. And I realized most
people around the world just don’t have this information. They just don’t
have access to it. They never learn it because we’ve never been taught it.
So, that’s what I’m here to do, is to share with you as much as I can in
the short period of time, to support you on your own health and healing
journey, whether it’s preventing cancer, or trying to reverse it. And if
it’s early stages skin cancer, or even let’s say it’s late stages or stage 4
plus of other forms of cancer, this information is going to be incredibly
relevant for you.
So, if you’re with me, and you’re excited about this, and you’re ready
to learn this information, then dive in. Because I’m here to serve and
support you. So, the first step is to understand what actually is cancer.
So, cancer’s a metabolic disease.
We know that now, because if you look at a healthy cell. A healthy cell
goes through something called normal cellular respiration, which is the
ability for our healthy cells to break down sugars, and other natural
biological chemicals, and turn them into energy. Typically, what we know
of as ATP. This is similar to like a car using gasoline as fuel. The car burns
the gasoline for energy. And we burn ATP for energy in the body. Super
important for the body’s functions.
The first step of cellular respiration’s glycolysis, which breaks down

glucose. Second step is something called the Krebs cycle, which
continues to create more ATP. The third step, again, we’re on healthy
cellular respiration. This is your healthy cells of your body. It’s called
oxidative phosphorylation.
This takes place in the mitochondria of the cell. And this needs a lot of
oxygen. And this is the part that produces a ton more ATP. And when the
whole process is done, a healthy cell can generate around 36 molecules
or 36 units of ATP. That’s just being healthy, everyday healthy cells.
Now, the difference is, a cancer cell respiration is, once a healthy cell
becomes dysfunctional, which is most often due to excessive toxins and
nutrient deficiencies, then the genes get damaged, and the cell begins to
mutate. Generally, what happens is, is it enters a chronic fermentative
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state, that’s why we say cancer is chronic cell fermentation. This also
leads to a metabolic disease.
This mutation actually though is a natural process. It’s there to save

your life. It’s there to prolong the life of the cell. But too much of it too
often is what leads to what we know as a cancer diagnosis. If the cell
didn’t actually mutate, start to ferment, and create energy through a
fermentative process, then it would become necrotic. And we know a
necrotic tissue turns into a major infection. And that infection would kill
you.
So, cancer’s actually trying to save your life. That’s why it’s not the
enemy. That’s why this approach of shoot it, blast it, kill it, take it out,
burn it, get rid of it, hate it, FU cancer, whatever, is the wrong approach.
Because it’s a natural process that’s trying to save your life. And that’s
where we can learn to have some gratitude and some graciousness
towards cancer. Because it is meant to happen.
The problem is it happens far too often, far too much, through diet and
lifestyle, behaviors, that then it becomes a cancer diagnosis. It becomes
a problem when it advances exponentially. Cancer’s been growing in
your body for years in most cases, sometimes even decades. You don’t
even know it until the late stages. Because cancer typically doesn’t even
have any symptoms whatsoever.
When you see people with bald hair, and they’re sickly, and they’ve
lost all their hair, they’re in a hospital bed. That’s most of the time
not from cancer. It’s actually most of the time from the treatment,
the chemotherapy, the radiation. Or they end up with 2, or 3, or 4
comorbidities, multiple chronic diseases. Autoimmune disease, diabetes,
cancer, a lot of these go together because they are metabolic diseases.
So, we address the metabolic function, we address the underlying

causes, we address the body’s ability to get rid of the cancer naturally,
which is what your body is designed to do. Skin cancer, kidney cancer,
liver cancer, prostate cancer, breast cancer, doesn’t matter. All cancer’s
the same process. It’s this process right here that I’m telling you. It’s
chronic fermentative state.
And the cancer cells are super wasteful. They only partially breakdown
glucose. They overuse the first step of respiration called as glycolysis.
The cells massively divide and grow. Your body has a hard chance
removing them through the immune system, the lymphatic system. And
that’s usually when we see a cancer diagnosis.
And so, this is the cancer cell respiration. It’s clearly a metabolic
disorder. And the problem is, the cancer cells are only producing around
2 ATP instead of 36 ATP like a healthy cell. So, still they’re producing a
little bit of energy, just trying to hang on.
It’s like, someone that just fell off the side of a cliff, and they’re hanging
on to the side of the cliff. And they’re just hanging on for dear life. “I
don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.” That’s what cancer is. It’s holding
on to the side of the cliff, trying not to die. Trying to stay alive. It’s a
survival mechanism to help your cells stay alive.
[10:00]
Well, when cells become cancerous, your body has a natural ability to
kill them. Break them down and get rid them. And recycle the amino
acids, and help your body restore itself. But, if you’re nutrient deficient,
or your toxic burden is overloaded, then guess what, cancer grows
uncontrollably.
So, let’s get into skin cancer specifically. This is the skin cancer
presentation. So, I’m going to go through these quickly. There’s 3 really
common forms of skin cancer. There’s basal cell carcinoma, squamous
cell carcinoma, and melanoma. Those are the 3 most common types of
skin cancer. There’s obviously more types of skin cancers out there as
well.
Basal cell carcinoma. This is really the most common type. It tends to
develop in people who have fair skin. But the truth is, people who have
black skin, or even darker skin, can also have BCC. They’re common to
the head, neck, arms. But they can actually be anywhere in the body.
They look kind of like this picture, like a flesh-colored round growth
typically. And if you catch them early enough, they’re pretty easy to treat.
But if it grows, it could really penetrate deeper into the body, enter the
nerves and bones, causing damage and disfigurement.
So, the second type is squamous cell carcinoma. This is the second
most common type, just like BCC, basal cell, it tends to be in lighter skin
people, and have less of a risk than darker skin folks. Squamous cell also
looks kind of like this picture, like scaly patch, or red bump, or it could
be a sore that tends to kind of heal and reopen, and heal and reopen.
It usually forms in your skin, like around your ear, face, neck, arms,
chest. Places that tend to get a lot of sun exposure. And they can begin
to grow deep in the skin, which also can cause skin damage and even
disfigurement.
The third most type which tends to be the most serious type as it has
the tendency to spread, and can become much more dangerous, is
melanoma. And it can develop from a mole. It can appear suddenly
as a dark spot on the skin. And this tends to be a more deadly form of
cancer. But just like any form of cancer, there are causes and there are
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solutions, which is what we’re going to get into today.
Here’s a little bit of history. 70% of skin cancer deaths have actually
skyrocketed since the 1970s, pretty much around the world. Especially
there were some studies done in the UK that since the 1970s, it’s actually
increased by 70%. And in the US, 1.5 million people over the age of 70
are developing skin cancer. And cancer in general has grown almost 10
million cancer deaths from all cancers around the world each year.
It is on the rise. It has been on the rise. And the conventional medical
approach, the pharmaceutical approach for cancer has not done much
in terms of preventing it or reversing it. There are some conventional
treatments that can be helpful for cancer, that can certainly stop it in its
tracks. And that can slow it down. But there are many that actually do
not have long term strong or safe effects at reversing cancer, certainly
not at preventing it, because it’s a lifestyle disease. And it’s lifestyle
choices that prevent cancer.
So, skin cancer, these are known causes. Basal cell for example, tends
to develop after lots of frequent sun exposure, or lots of indoor tanning.
Now, the sun is often blamed for most skin cancer. Most people, that’s
what they equate. “The sun caused my cancer.”
But actually, the evidence is actually still unclear. How much sun,
and excessive sun exposure, in conjunction with what else might be
causing it. What other toxins might be on the skin or in your body, that’s
creating this mutation. Also, how much sun is too much sun. And is sun
really causing cancer or is it a combination of other factors. These are
important things you have to question.
And also, the data. You have to dig through the data, look deep to really
understand what’s going on. And what you will discover is, it’s not really
just the sun that we have to worry about. And actually, you’ll discover
that most people aren’t getting enough sun. So, I’ll cover that in a little
bit.
Chronic infections, skin inflammation from burns, scars, other conditions

can increase basal cell cancer risk. Chemical exposure. We know that
many chemicals – arsenic, industrial tar, coal, paraffin, plastics, all kinds
of things we’re going to cover in a little bit. Different types of oil can
definitely increase the risk for certain types of all cancers, and certain
types of non-melanoma skin cancers.
Smoking. Smokers are more likely to develop squamous cell skin

cancers, particularly on the lips. Also, we know smoking leads to lung
cancer. We know smoking is a major problem when it comes to cancer.
Radiation exposure. Actually, treatment with radiation for conventional

cancer treatment can actually increase your risk for developing skin
cancers in the exposed areas. And can cause other kinds of issues on
the skin that I’m not going to get into in this presentation, because a lot
of those issues have been covered in the other presentations during this
masterclass. So, I encourage you to take a look at some of those as well.
But radiation can definitely lead to skin cancer. So, be aware of that.
And a weakened immune system. We know that people with weakened

immune systems have an increased risk of melanoma, other skin
cancers and other cancers in general. The purpose of your immune
system, one of the many purposes, is actually to rid your body of cancer
cells.
So, if you have a weak immune system, if you’re sick often, you get the
cold, or you get what we call the flu. Or these kinds of symptoms quite
often, pneumonia, lung problems, digestive problems, different things
on a regular basis, you most likely have a weakened immune system.
You can also get tested, different kinds of tests to find out how strong
your immune system is. The immune system is critical to keep you
healthy from a cancer diagnosis.
So, if sun’s the problem, then we have to ask, is sunscreen the answer?
Now, here’s the major problem with many sunscreens. Some of the
chemicals in sunscreens, and these are common chemicals in many
sunscreens, can actually contribute to disease, contribute to cancer. So,
here’s just a few.
Avobenzone, which gives rise to new compounds responsible for

photoallergic and phototoxic reactions. Basically, what phototoxicity
means, it’s something that causes sunburn, blisters, other skin
problems. This is a chemical that’s in many sunscreens. It can actually
cause phototoxicity. And in in vitro studies they found that it actually has
mutation results. So, there is a chance that this could potentially lead to
cancer.
Oxybenzone, another common chemical in sunscreen, which the FDA

has classified as an endocrine disrupting chemical. Octocrylene, which
produces excess reactive oxygen species that can interfere with cellular
signaling, causes mutations, leading to cell death. And may be implicated
in cardiovascular disease. Now there’s cardiovascular disease potential
on top of cancer. Don’t really want that on top of the cancer diagnosis.
Homosalate. It can become toxic and disrupt estrogen, androgen,

and progesterone levels. More chemicals that are in common day
sunscreens today – octisalate, considered a hormone/endocrine
disruptor. Octinoxate has been recently banned in Hawaii and in Florida,
because they may harm marine life. If it can harm marine life, don’t you
think it can harm human life?
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And ensulizole, which is considered a hormone/endocrine disruptor. A
lot of these are basically hormone disruptors. And what are hormone
or endocrine disruptors? They are basically exogenous chemicals,
chemicals from the outside in, that can interfere and impair the
function of the endocrine system due to their interaction with estrogen
receptors, or the estrogen signaling pathways, inducing adverse effects
in the normal development which can eventually lead to cancer. So,
these endocrine disruptors can potentially lead to cancer. And these are
in many sunscreens.
So, here’s where I stand on sunscreen. I do not recommend any

sunscreens, chemical or even organic. “Nathan, what about zinc/titanium
sunscreens, they all say it’s safe?” I don’t recommend any sunscreen for
anyone ever. Why? Because one day, just like we found out all these
so-called “safe” sunscreens that have chemicals that accumulate in the
body, and that can lead to more disease, are not so safe. And yet they’re
still marketed and available. People are buying them and slathering
themselves up every day, all day.
We may find out that those so-called zinc and titanium sunscreens, and
organic sunscreens actually are not safe as well. And I actually theorize
that one day we will find that out. So, I just say, stay away from them
altogether. There’s a much better way.
And what is that better solution? It’s really simple. Hat and long sleeves,
period. Simple. You’re getting too much sun, you feel like you’re going to
get a sunburn, put on a hat and long sleeves. It’s really easy. So simple.
But, we have to ask ourselves this question – is sun really the problem?
Some people suggest avoiding the sun because it causes cancer.
Well, this causes unnecessary fear and actually misunderstanding
about the power of the sun. The sun emits just about every form of
electromagnetic radiation we know of. So, is it true that sun can cause
cancer? Yes, potentially. But the sun can also help heal cancer. And how
is that?
[20:00]
Well, the most common form of cancer caused by the sun that we
think of today is skin cancer. Skin cancer, we tend to think comes from
excessive sun burns, which damage the DNA. And when your skin
continues to get burned again and again, the DNA damage is either too
continuous or too excessive. It may be a signal that you’ve gotten too
much sun and you should probably limit your sun exposure.
Well, too much sun or tanning in beds too often, can damage the
DNA. It’s actually very rare and highly unlikely that getting a light sun
burn once in a while causes cancer. According to WebMD, although
anyone can get skin cancer, the risk is greatest for people who have
fair or freckled skin that burns easily. Light eyes, blond or red hair.
Dark skinned individuals are also susceptible to all types of skin cancer,
although their risk is lower.
Aside from complexion, we already covered many of the other risks that
can lead to skin cancer, especially toxins on the body, even sunscreens
on your body, soaking into your skin, soaking into your bloodstream.
So, while we should be mindful of excessive exposure to the sun and

not letting ourselves get burned too often, according to the 2006 WHO
report, The Global Burden of Disease (around the world) Due to Ultraviolet
Radiation, states that ultraviolet radiation exposure accounts for only
0.1% of the total global burden of disease. 0.1% of the total global
burden of disease is through excessive ultraviolet radiation.
On the other hand, the same report states that a larger annual disease
burden of 3.3 billion DALYS, so the 0.1% of total global burden disease
is 0.1% DALYS. Without sun, the lack of sun is actually causing 3.3 billion
DALYS worldwide that could result from low levels of UVR exposure. So,
it is massively, massively out of balance. And more people are actually
likely to be diagnosed with diseases like cancer from not enough sun,
rather than too much sun. Super powerful thing to understand.
And according to the PMC journal Focus, titled Benefits of Sunlight: A

Bright Spot for Human Health, by Nathaniel Mead, the best-known benefit
of sunlight is its ability to boost the body’s vitamin D supply. Most cases
of vitamin D deficiency are due to lack of outdoor sun exposure. At least
1000 different genes governing virtually every tissue in the body, are
now thought to be regulated by basically D3, which is the active form
of the vitamin, including several involved in calcium metabolism, and
neuromuscular, and immune system functioning. That’s the key right
there, the immune system function.
So, we actually need the sun to be healthy. We need the sun for vitamin
D. We need the sun to keep our immune system strong. And it’s
estimated that 40% of Americans alone are vitamin D deficient. I actually
think it’s more than that. That means they spend too much time indoors,
not enough time in the sun. So, it’s really clear that we all need more
sunshine actually to be healthier.
But there is a balance here. How much is enough? How much is too
much? And these are pretty simple things we can answer. But we do
have to recognize, if you live above a certain latitude, or below a certain
latitude, like one study that found that in high latitudes, above the 40
degree parallel of Earth. So, if you just lookup, just go to google 40
degree parallel of Earth, you’ll see where that is, that actually you can’t
439
get enough vitamin D from the sun.
The closer you are to the equator, the closer you are to like the southern
states in the US, for example, if you are in the US. Like, New Mexico,
and Texas, and so forth, southern California, you can get enough sun. If
you get above some of those states, you actually can’t get enough sun,
unless you spend a lot more time out in the sun. And you’ve got to make
sure that you’re not burning.
So, in that case, you probably do need a vitamin D supplement, if you’re

going to continue living where you are. And a vitamin D supplement
actually would be beneficial to everybody, since most people are vitamin
D deficient. So, how much sun is too much? To be honest, there’s not
really an exact science on this just yet. But we can use some basic
reasoning here.
For me, I try to get at least 20 minutes of sunshine, just about every day.
Sometimes more. Sometimes up to an hour or more. And I’ll usually
do that in short bursts, 10 or 15 minutes at a time. I’ll sit outside in the
morning with the sunrise, and I’ll read for 15 minutes, drinking some tea.
As it gets hotter in the day, I’ll sit outside, taking breaks throughout the
day.
Again, I take my shirt off, I’m in my shorts, especially from spring through
the fall. Because you need the sun to enter your skin, for your body to
absorb it and turn it into vitamin D. So, 10 minutes at a time. You’ve got
to pay attention to how your body feels. If it feels like you’re heating up
too much, you feel like you’re going to get a sunburn, but you’re going to
be in the sun for hours that day, put a long sleeve shirt on, put a hat on,
and you’ll be fine. That’s your best sunscreen.
You can get shirts, and hats, and things that breathe pretty well. It will
actually keep you cool. Your sweat up against the shirt will actually cool
your body down when it’s hot. So, don’t be afraid to sweat a little bit. It’s
actually good for you. It is good to detox through sweating as well. So,
do not be afraid of sweat.
So, basically the sun is your friend, but don’t overdo it. Don’t get burned.
Don’t let your body get burned. But, don’t be afraid of it. And if you’re
outside 10 to 20 minutes at a time, 2 to 3 times a day, most likely you’re
not going to burn. If you’re really fair skinned, really white skinned,
you’ve got to ease into it. 5 minutes here, 10 minutes here, 5 minutes
here, 10 minutes here. And, as your skin starts to darken a bit, your
pigment darkens, you can spend more time. Again, just being mindful
that you’re not burning.
And a vitamin D supplement will also really help. 10,000 units a day of
vitamin D supplement. You can get that in a little, tiny tablet, to take
10,000 units, once a day. There’s some phenomenal studies on that
as well – long term use of vitamin D at 10,000 units a day. I didn’t put
them in this presentation, but you can look into that, if you want to
supplement with vitamin D.
So, what are solutions for skin cancer? Well, medical, conventional
solutions for early skin cancer’s often they’ll use something like
cryotherapy, which is liquid nitrogen. They’re going to freeze and kill the
cancer cells on your skin. That’s fine, but it doesn’t get to the root cause.
And about 60% of the people treated for skin cancer, have a recurrence
within 10 years.
Recurrences can also be much worse than the initial cancer. And if you
don’t address the underlying root cause that caused the cancer in the
first place, which is typically more than the sun. It’s typically toxins, it’s
diet, it’s lifestyle, it’s lack of nutrients. Some of these we’re going to get
into. That cancer can not only show up on the skin, but it can show up in
the liver, in the kidneys, in the lungs, in the prostate, in the breast, and
other areas of the body. So, we have to get to the root cause.
And what are the root causes of all cancer, you might ask. Well, the best
breakdown of the top 6 root cause of cancer I’ve ever heard was from
Dr. Sunil Pai, MD, who is a colleague and a friend of mine. He has a clinic
in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He’s in my documentary, titled Cancer: The
Integrative Perspective.
And one of the things that he’s broken it down to, to make it super
simple and easy for people, is these 6 fundamental categories of root
causes of cancer. They are - chronic inflammation, elevated blood
glucose, environmental toxins, stress, unhealthy diet, and lifestyle
behaviors.
Now, we’re going to get into most of these here in just a moment. I’m
going to go through these quickly, so I do encourage you to take notes
and follow along. And I’ll give you some solutions at the end of this
as well. But just again, inflammation causes cancer. Elevated blood
glucose, high sugar in your diet can cause cancer. Environmental toxins,
we know cause cancer. Too much stress can absolutely cause cancer.
And unhealthy diet, processed foods can cause cancer. And lifestyle
behaviors.
So, here’s the top 13. There’s certainly more, but these are really the top
13, what I call cancer causing culprits that you can pretty much remove
and change almost immediately in your life, to help reduce your cancer
risk and help your body heal from cancer.
The first one is plastics. We know plastics, more than BPA, but everything
says BPA-free now, but it’s still full of other toxins and endocrine
441
disruptors in your plastics. Plastics can lead to cancer. Get rid of plastics.
Replace it with glass or stainless steel. Super simple. Make a list. Make a
T-Chart. I love Dr. Tom’s approach. And Dr. Nalini Chilkov’s approach, or
Dr. Marlene Siegel’s approach.
Take a piece of paper right now. Make a T-Chart. And on the left side,
put things that I am still using or doing. And on the right side put things
I need to do now. So, on the left side you’re going to write down these
things that you’re still doing. I’m sorry, left side you’re going to write
down things you’re still doing. And then on the right side you’re going to
write down the things you’re doing now. Things you are doing now. The
good things on the right side. Bad things on the left. Let’s make it simple.
Bad on the left, good on the right.
[30:00]
So, on the left, plastics. On the right side, glass, stainless steel. And
you’ll highlight that right side, or circle it once you’ve done it. Bedding
on the left side. Bedding is pretty much all kinds of bedding. Polyester,
all different kinds of, filled with typically all kinds of chemicals. You
need organic beddings. On the left side, standard bedding. On the right
side, organic, cotton bedding. That’s pillow sheets, blankets, pillows,
everything. Even the bed. The bed can be more expensive. But start with
the linens first.
Number 3, body care products. On the left side, standard body care
products. On the right side needs to be all 100% organic, plant-based
products. There are so many chemicals in body care products. Lotions,
and toothpastes, and creams, and you name it. Soaps and shampoos.
Those chemicals they say are safe because they’re in low amounts. But
they are not safe because long term you’re accumulating them in the
bloodstream. They’re getting stuck and continuously leading to chronic
inflammation in the body. Your body doesn’t remove them quite easily.
They stay in your body for long term. And these chemicals definitely can
lead to cancer. So, left side, standard body care products. Right side,
organic plant-based, only 100% organic.
Left side, animal products. Meat, dairy, especially processed meat, huge
around baloneys, and sandwiches meats, and things like that, we know
are known carcinogens, or probable carcinogens. On the left side also
homogenized and pasteurized dairy. It’s super inflammatory. So, milk
and cheese. And on the right side you can put more plants, more fruits,
more vegetables.
Or, for animal products on the right side you could put organic soy
instead of meat. Organic almond milk instead of dairy. Organic almond
cheese instead of cow’s cheese. These things are crucial in helping
reduce inflammation and help your body heal itself.
And yes, organic soy, there are so many studies, anticancer properties.
It’s actually very good for you. Don’t believe any misinformation
campaigns that went around a number of years ago, most likely from
the meat and dairy industry. Organic soy is incredibly healthy for you.
Number 5, processed foods. On the left is packaged foods, it’s high

chemical foods. On the right side, just plain old fresh, organic whole
foods. Left side, is sugar, processed sugar. Right side is healthier
substitutes. You could put stevia, or honey for example, which are much
healthier substitutes.
Alcohol on the left side. Alcohol does cause cancer. We know that. Better
things than alcohol. You can drink kombucha, you can drink sparkling
water, and put some lemon in there. You don’t need alcohol to help
your body do anything. It might make you feel good for a while, but it’s
poisoning your body.
So, we’re still on the T-Chart. Left side, EMF exposure. That’s excessive
EMF exposure from your computers, your phones, wireless internet,
things like that. On the right side you can put turn everything off at
night, and sleep with no EMFs around you, the best you can. Period.
Number 9, pollution in the air. There’s not a lot you can do about that,
unless you move out in the jungle, in the middle of a forest, hundreds
of miles away from civilization. Or get yourself a really good air purifier,
like the VollaraAir Purifier. We offer those from time to time through
webinar because it’s what I use in my house. And they work incredibly
well to clean out the VOCs, and the fungus, and the molds, and the
bacteria that are floating around your house. So, good air purifier on the
right side.
On the left side of your T-Chart, chemical pollution in the water. On

the right side, you need a good reverse osmosis, and even electrically
charged water filtration system. On the left side, this is a big one. So,
those top 10, you can do easily and quickly, and very affordably. The
next 2 can be a little bit more expensive but really important over time.
Carpets. Carpets tend to have lots of VOCs and fire retardants that are
chemicals that can lead to cancer and other diseases. Replace them with
just a solid hardwood floor. This is not a “you have to do it” kind of thing.
The other ones are like, yes, you have to do them, if you really want to
reduce your cancer risk. The air purifier will help with the VOCs that
come off the carpets. This is kind of a luxury one. But I do recommend
it. Replace it with just solid hardwood floors or tile floors that don’t have
chemicals that are off-gassing.
443
Number 12, huge one. Mercury in your teeth or root canals. Go to Gaia
TV. Go watch a documentary called Root Cause. It will blow your mind.
You’ve got to get the mercury out of your teeth. You’ve got to get the
root canals out of your teeth, out of your mouth. These things are
leading to chronic inflammatory conditions that can lead to cancer.
And number 13, a big one - stress, anxiety, fear. Left side, you can
just put stress, anxiety, fear. On the right side you can put meditate
2 times a day. In the morning and at night. Ideally 30 minutes in the
morning. Ideally 30 minutes at night. Meditation practice activates your
parasympathetic nervous system. Turns on your healing response.
Helps your body fight against cancer.
So, there you have it. That was 13 top cancer causing culprits, and their
solutions. And we did that in less than 10 minutes, I think. I know it’s lot
to cover but that’s why I wanted you to make a T-Chart, see what is the
causes. And then, on the other side, look at what you need to do.
And then, just spend time. Pick one, once a week, pick one. This week
I’m going to start meditating, 30 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes
at night. Boom. Commit to a week. Next week. And then you keep that
going obviously. You don’t stop that doing. Next week, EMF. I’m going
to turn off my Wi-Fi, and my breakers, and anything that’s putting out
excessive EMF exposure around me while I’m sleeping. Now, start that.
The next week, you know what, this week I’m going to dedicate it, get rid
of all our plastic containers in the house and switch them out for glass
and stainless-steel water bottles for example. Okay. You do it one week
at a time. And then all of a sudden, after a few months, you are living a
profoundly healthy and cancer-free lifestyle. So that’s how we approach
it, to make it practical and real in your life.
Now, let’s get into some natural anti-cancer compounds. Now, there’s a
lot that I didn’t have time to go into in this presentation. I’m not going to
be able to get through all of these as well. We’re running short on time
but I’m going to get through a few of them.
Carotenoids. Carotenoids are what you see is like the pigments in

plants, algae, bacteria, things like that, that produce like a bright yellow,
red, orange colors, in things like vegetables and fruits. Now, we know
these are type of antioxidants for humans. And there’s more than 600
different types of carotenoids. Some of the most abundant sources can
be from things like fruits and vegetables.
B-carotene is a one that’s a really widely studied carotenoid. And

that’s really abundant in things like carrots, and spinach, and peppers,
and pumpkin, and sweet potatoes, and cantaloupe. There’s a lot of
studies on this that show a diet high in carotenoids may be related to a
decreased risk for melanoma. B-carotene is able to induce apoptosis in
melanoma cells in vitro. So, the potential to actually kill cancer cells in in
vitro studies.
Lycopene is another form of carotenoid. It’s one of the most common

carotenoids. It’s in things like watermelon, and papaya, and tomato, and
guava, and grapefruit, and apricots, and peaches. And there’s a lot of
evidence that suggests that lycopene, which is a major carotenoid, may
prevent against the formation and the development of different types of
human cancers, including prostate, breast, and lung cancer.
Now, these are just a couple of the known 600 carotenoids that are
found in many different plants, and fruits, and vegetables. The problem
is, when you study each one of these individually, in isolation, of course
you’re going to have conflicting studies. I can find dozens of studies
showing the benefits of these. And I can find some studies that say,
they didn’t have many benefits at all, or even maybe had some negative
effects.
And the reason for that is because you studied them in isolation. You
can’t separate things from its whole state and then think, that’s our
pharmaceutical approach. How do I take out one molecule, patent it,
turn it into a drug, and make a trillion dollars, trying to cure cancer? It
doesn’t work that way. You have to look at the whole picture. What are
all the things inside that particular plant, or fruit, or vegetable that can
contribute to the health of the human body.
I’m sharing with you some of these things now just so you understand
the compounds that we know so far that are showing tremendous
effects for helping with cancer, but also helping you to have a bigger
picture.
Something else that we know a lot about, but still don’t know everything
about, is vitamins. Vitamin A, C, D, E. I’m not going to go into each one of
these, but each one has shown tremendous effects at helping to reduce
cancer. In vitro studies and in vivo studies.
And again, these vitamins are found in mangoes, and papayas, and
squashes, and carrots, and sweet potatoes, and strawberries, and
melons, and green peppers, and broccoli, and sunflower seeds, and
almonds. And beet greens, and collard greens, and pumpkins, and
spinach, and asparagus, and mangoes, and avocados. These are
vitamins that are essential for the body to be healthy. Again, we can find
tons of studies on just each isolated vitamin.
[40:00]
But what we need to look at is the entire fruit and see, it’s got vitamin
445
A, and B, and D, and C. And it’s got carotenoids. And it’s got other
phytonutrients. And it’s got fiber. And we know that prebiotic is going
to help heal your gut. And it’s got, and it’s got, and it’s got, and it’s got.
And when you add all that together, you can pretty much assume the
tremendous benefit from that synergy of the plant itself.
So, terpenes/terpenoids, these are another natural anti-cancer

compound that have been studied really well in things like mushrooms.
Some really great forms of mushrooms showing promising anticancer
results. The camphor tree mushroom, Chaga, Cordyceps, Lion’s Mane,
Maitake, among many other forms of mushrooms.
Tea tree oil. There’s a lot of studies on tea tree oil to help inhibit
melanoma cell growth in vitro, through cell cycle arrest, apoptosis,
necrosis, and inhibition of cell proliferation. There’s actually a lot more
studies on tea tree oil as well. And using it on the skin.
Algae, like blue-green algae for example, is a popular nutraceutical

substance. And it’s got potent antioxidant properties with potential
anticarcinogenic activities. Curcumin has been studied like crazy.
We know curcumin has anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, anticancer,
antiseptic, anti-plasmodial, astringent, digestive, diuretic, and many
other properties.
Other plants that are commonly high in terpenes or terpenoids are

things like tea. Green tea is a great one. Thyme, cannabis, Spanish sage,
citrus fruits, like lemon, and oranges, and mandarin. Again, we’re looking
at these individual molecules from these amazing healing plants, but
look at the terpenes, look at the antioxidants, look at the vitamins, look
at the minerals, all combined together.
You’ve got another one, another anticancer compound that we know
a lot about, sulforaphane from cruciferous vegetables, like broccoli,
and cabbage, and kale, and cauliflower. We know that the anticancer
activities of sulforaphane has been reported to included apoptosis
induction, inhibition of cell proliferation, the inhibition of metastasis.
And again, this is studied by itself. I’m sure you could find some studies
that say, sulforaphane is bad. The problem again with those kinds of
studies and even these studies where it’s looking at it by itself is, you are
isolating it from its whole food source.
And so, what I want you to think about is look at the pattern. Look at the
pattern of all these studies. And what the pattern shows us is that plants
are medicine. Plants are medicine. A diet high in natural, fresh, organic,
diverse plants.
Think about it. All these plants. You probably heard mango half a dozen
times. You heard citrus fruits. You heard greens. You heard kale and
broccoli multiple times. Mushrooms, like they have so many benefits,
when you add them all together. We didn’t even get into so many other
properties that they have as well. We didn’t even talk about fiber. We
didn’t even talk about other phytonutrients in there. And amino acids
which are so important.
If you add it all together, it’s pretty clear, plants are medicine. And they
can assist your body in helping heal itself and helping prevent against
cancer. If you look at a diet high in fruits, and vegetables, and nuts, and
seeds, and mushrooms, and berries, and onions, and legumes. You’re
eating these fresh and in high abundance every day. You’re avoiding
processed sugar. You’re getting a well-balanced diet. You’re avoiding
processed food. Your chances for preventing/reversing cancer go up
astronomically.
And you can go listen to all the interviews that I’ve done with so many
cancer conquerors, and stage 4 cancer conquerors, who switched to
a highly nutrient dense, plant-based diet. Lots of green vegetables
juices, and lots of salads, and bean soups, and fresh berries, and nuts,
and seeds every day. And obviously other lifestyle factors - exercise,
meditation, and living a healthy life. And their cancer goes away. It’s
incredible.
It’s not guaranteed. I’m not guaranteeing anybody that yeah, you
can cure your cancer if you just do this. But your chances can go up
astronomically. Many of the world-leading experts will agree with this.
The science is definitely agreeing with this, and pointing in this direction.
And you can do it. That’s the point. These are lifestyle choices. Cancer
doesn’t have to be a death sentence, when you understand what it is,
what’s causing it, what you can do to help reverse it. You take the power
back into your hands, even with so-called genetic cancers, because
epigenetics has proven that even if cancer is in your genes, it doesn’t
have to be your destiny.
And finally, before we wrap up, I’m going to share with you this natural
skin cream recipe that I learned from Sabrina Zielinski. Who is actually
Mama Z, who is the wife of Dr. Eric Zielinski, who is hosting this
incredible program, this incredible masterclass. I interviewed her for my
Becoming Cancer-Free Masterclass. And she told me about this cream. She
actually made it for her father to help heal his skin cancer.
And so here it is. Here’s the recipe I’m sharing with you from her.
And this is a skin healing serum that she uses. It’s a combination of
coconut oil, aloe vera, and essential oils. And I didn’t even get into
the science of coconut oil and aloe vera. But there’s a lot of science
proving its anticancer effects, and healing properties on the skin, and
anticarcinogenic effects. So, this is skin healing recipe that she made,
447
makes perfect sense why it helped her father heal from skin cancer.
So, you mix together ½ ounce aloe vera gel, whether you cut it fresh
from the plant, or you just buy it. And you mix together ½ ounce liquid
coconut oil. So, ½ ounce of both, each mixed together. If your coconut
oil is hard, what I use is, I just warm it up on a pan on the stove. Don’t
use the microwave.
Sabrina recommends you can also just warm it up in hot water. Use the
hot water to warm it up. I just put it on the stove, really low temperature.
Just until it melts and I take it right off the stove. So, you don’t want to
cook it. You still want it fresh and raw.
And then you mix your aloe and your coconut oil together. Once
they’re mixed together in a liquid, add 4 drops of lavender, 2 drops of
frankincense, 2 drops of tea tree. Remember, we talked about tea tree. 1
drop of Hawaiian sandalwood, 1 drop of helichrysum. And you mix it all
together and then store it in the fridge.
Now, when you apply it, you can apply it once a day, twice a day, apply it
daily, as you can. First, what she did is, swab a little bit of Braggs Apple
Cider Vinegar. We know the healing effects of apple cider vinegar on the
skin is incredible. So, what she did is, take a little swab of it first, and just
rub it on the affected area, and let it dry. It dries pretty quick. And then,
on top of it, then apply the skin healing serum on top.
And she said this is the thing that helped her father’s skin cancer go
away. And I absolutely believe it, because everything in here has one
form or another of incredible healing benefits.
So, there you have it. The top 13 cancer causing culprits. We went over
the sun and what you really need to know about the sun. We went over
some of the compounds in your foods that can help to prevent/reverse
cancer. There’s great skin healing recipe.
I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time for learning this
information, for being committed to your health. I appreciate you being
here with me. So, I thank you so much. I wish you ultimate health and
happiness. Take care.

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only and are not intended to be a substitute for professional

11 Sabrina and Eric Zielinski, DC

51 Ryan and Teddy Sternagel

71 Sabrina and Eric Zielinski, DC

87 Aimee Carlson and Naomi Damask

113 Ryan and Teddy Sternagel

129 Sabrina and Eric Zielinski, DC

149 Kiran Krishnan

167 Amy Rawls, MS, RD, LD, FMNS, CGN

203 Sabrina and Eric Zielinski, DC

219 Brian Vaszily

235 Suzanne Marlowe

255 Sabrina and Eric Zielinski, DC

279 Jaime Boyachek, BSN, RN, FNLP, CTNC

297 Robyn Openshaw

309 Ryan and Teddy Sternagel

319 Sabrina and Eric Zielinski, DC

349 Peter Osborne, DC, DACBN, PScD

381 Cristina Marie

389 Ryan Sternagel and Sheila Kilbane, MD

401 Ryan and Teddy Sternagel

415 Amber Krogsrud, BSc, ND

431 Nathan Crane

Importance of Skin Health

To begin, we need to understand why skin health is so important. Many

It protects your body against airborne toxins and topical chemicals.

Your skin acts as a physical barrier to protect against airborne toxins,

The bottom line is that we all need to be focusing our attention on

But for everyone, as well, who wants to avoid systemic inflammation,

In The Essential Oils Apothecary, we cover advanced strategies and

Lesson 1: Define Most Common Skin Disorders

And one of the most common symptoms of skin disease is dermatitis.

Atopic dermatitis usually develops in early childhood and is believed to

Contact dermatitis is a skin rash caused by contact with a known trigger.

Now, allergic contact dermatitis is a combination of the two, meaning it

Psoriasis is another inflammatory skin condition. It produces thick red

Rosacea is a common disorder that mainly affects skin on the face. It

Urticaria is a skin rash triggered by a reaction to food, medication, or

And last is vitiligo. When skin loses melanocytes, or pigment cells,

So, is it eczema or psoriasis? Is it acne or rosacea? Does it even matter?

In fact, everyone with chronic inflammatory skin conditions will benefit

Sadly, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to increased instances of skin

As expected, because of the environmental triggers in toxic body care

It is important to reiterate that even though the symptoms may vary,

“Leaky Skin” Explained

As we have just learned, skin health is intricately connected to virtually

Known as the gut-brain-skin axis theory, this connection is understood

So in summary, gut disease and mental health issues contribute to

Sabrina: I am so excited to share with you my oil base. This is probably,

So a little backstory on that. When you look at the recipe, there’s 54

What I want to do is I want to share something from Patricia really

Sabrina: Yes. Right.

Dr. Z: This is our reserves, right?

Sabrina: Yes. Yes. And if you change an ingredient, it could slightly

Now, in the winter months, especially if you live in a cold-weather area,

Dr. Z: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sabrina: It makes great gifts.

Dr. Z: And start having fun and experimenting.

My goal, anytime I do a talk, is to people from either not knowing

I like to be pragmatic about how we work through the triggers of

But we can also have something called celiac disease, which is an

What I want to talk about first... or second, the second trigger is

And then mold from a water damaged building, that’s an entirely