Episode #160: Your ACNE Could Actually Be A GUT Problem! Featuring Katie Stewart

Whether you had acne, pain for periods, missing periods,

I actually didn't have any of the above. I just took it because all my friends did. - When you start messing with hormones, especially as a teenager, you are setting yourself up for drastic failure.

- People like, what do you mean birth control? Like, I need birth control. It actually balances my hormones. If I don't take it, I have horrible periods. I tell them, like, well, that's 'cause your body is sending you a message

that there's something going on and I can understand that we wanna be stopping that horrible pain that you're having, but can we be getting to the root cause of what's driving that? Because when you eventually do come off of the birth control pill,

what's gonna be happening to your body?

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All right, everybody. Welcome back to the Dylan Jamelli podcast. So thankfully, my guests are very patient, woman, being that we've had to reschedule multiple times, but she's been gracious and I'm super grateful.

I am a complex individual at times. But we've, me and my wife both, 'cause she can't wait to listen to you, and I am known for being a skin care person, snobby to an extent.

So I can't wait to talk to you because I've talked to like, skin care companies and people on here, but not like a real expert that's been doing this for so long that's so experienced. So I'm jazzed, I'm stoked,

and I'm so thankful that you came to see me. My guest is a registered holistic nutritionist and functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner who specializes in adult acne. And for the last decade, she's had over 3,000 clients

over 15 countries that have clear chronic breakouts and she does what I love, because she does root cause nutrition and functional lab testing. And so we're gonna dig into what I feel

is the proper way to go about treatments and finding causes and how to go about preventing instead of just treating. So my friends, you've probably heard of my guest, but if not, welcome Katie Stewart.

- Thank you, Dylan, I'm so excited to be here. It's something I love doing. It's podcast, guest team, having people in my podcast, so anytime I get to come and do them, and especially in person, there's so much fun.

- Well, like I said, you are well known in what you do and I can't wait to get into everything that you do. I find that there's a lot of, well, there's a lot of misconception with everything.

- Huge. (laughs) I'm sure we could have like a multipart series on that. - Right, so I should temper what I say here. But there is a lot of stuff that I wanna get into, like, with the sun, with skincare products.

- What's in them, the whole mind. - Right. - And I feel like you are one of the most qualified people that I could bring on to do this.

So let's talk about you first,

because I know you had some skin things that you dealt with, which obviously were drivers and that contributing to what you focus on. Talk to me about some of the things that, not only you experienced,

because I'm sure what you experienced a lot of people do. - Absolutely. Yeah, I originally, my previous career was in television. I worked for Hockey Night in Canada if all the Americans listening,

that's our version of Sunday Night Football. So I worked behind the scenes for 14 years in major market television, where I was working with celebrities, NHL players, coaches, executives.

I was also working as an on-air location host. So I was hosting a TV show every day. I was editing content, staring at my face in an HD, edit suite every single day. And I actually started working on a gluten free cooking show.

This was like circa 2011. Gluten was not a thing back then,

“if we can remember a time where gluten wasn't a thing.”

And I thought this lady was crazy. Why would I stop eating bread and pasta

And I thought, you want to let's give this crazy lady a chance. I took it out my lifelong migraines one away. So that makes that I had. And the acne issues I had been having since coming off the birth control pillow

in my early 20s started to get better. I didn't completely clear, but I was noticing a shift. And working in television, we obviously, you know, it's a very visual medium. And when I was getting these chronic breakouts,

and I'm staring at my face in an HD edit suite all day, or I'm working with celebrities, and I'm like seeing them like their eyes fluttered down to the breakouts on my jawline. And being 2021 at the time,

you want to be taken seriously in your career. You don't want to look like a teenager with acne. So it was really impacting my self-confidence. And that's when I decided to go back to school studying nutrition, because I really discovered

that what I was eating was having an impact on my body. - Okay, let's go back to the birth control thing, 'cause I've spoken out a lot on birth control use in general. Obviously, there's hormonal fluctuations there. Can you tell me what exactly happens

when you take birth control first,

“and then how it affects your skin and your hormones?”

- Yeah, and this is a huge issue, especially I think from a millennial women, because so many of us was given the birth control pill that 12, 13, 14, whether you had acne, pain for periods, missing periods.

I actually didn't have any of the above. I didn't need it for its intended purpose. I just took it, 'cause all my friends did. - Oh. - And the doctor was like, here's six boxes,

I'll see you in six months. And I think I was probably on 13 or 14 at the time, and I took it for almost another decade. No idea the impact that it was having on my body. And when I went back to school to study nutrition,

my very first textbook there was a small paragraph on how birth control impact your body. And all of these like light bulbs on off, it was like a cartoon with like the light bulbs over my house, like, oh my god, like I had no idea

that birth control could impact my body like this. And it was talking about the impact that has in your microbiome and your detoxification organs, like your liver, the nutrient depletions that it causes. And that the fact it doesn't balance your hormones.

I was like, what do you mean? It doesn't balance my hormones. That's what the doctor said. - It's an imbalance.

“- It's an imbalance, and it's just acting like a band aid.”

It's covering the issues that you have, and not only is it like contributing to existing hormonal imbalances, but it can be creating new hormonal imbalances. So when you come off of it,

you're now hit with a whole slew of issues that have been bubbling underneath the surface, but you haven't noticed it 'cause it's been suppressed. - Okay. - This is a whole topic.

(laughing) - It is. - You're like, where do we go? - No, this is good, because this needs to be discussed, because a lot of people think you're fear-mongering

when you talk about birth control or that you're playing a side and no, we're not, we're talking truth in fact, and when you start messing with hormones, especially as a teenager, you are setting yourself up for drastic failure.

- Absolutely, 'cause so many of these women or girls, girls that are being put on this, they're still 13, 14.

Their hormones have never had a chance to settle

and become what they're supposed to and start to balance themselves. So if you're just flooding your body with these synthetic assurgents, especially if you're on, or the, like, not just on one of the combo pills,

like where we're dealing with the assurgents, and it's actually suppressing your ovulation. It's cutting off the communication between your brain and your ovaries. And we have to remember,

our body has a hormonal system and rhythm for a purpose. And when we start messing with it, it can be having lifelong impacts. - So a lot of the stuff that I did for many years in my background was working with body builders

that you steroids. - There we go. - And so it's the same thing. When you're tricking your body and it's flooding itself or shutting things down, then it forgets how to regulate when you stop.

Even if it's a short time. - Absolutely. - And if you're going as a teenager,

“or even in your 20s, you're not fully developed, right?”

So early stage teenager, what would be one of the worst things you could do? - Go and flood it with a bunch of synthetic hormones. - Right, 'cause then your body's really screwed up

because it never had a chance.

- Yeah, and what I hear a lot from people, it's very triggering topic for a lot of women birth control. And I found especially in the beginning years when I talked about this where it wasn't widely discussed. People like, "What do you mean birth control?

"I need birth control." It actually balances my hormones. If I don't take it, I have horrible periods. If I don't take it this happens. And I tell them, well, that's 'cause your body is sending you

a message that there's something going on and I can understand that we wanna be stopping that horrible pain that you're having, but can we be getting to the root cause of what's driving that? Because when you eventually do come off of the birth control pill,

what's gonna be happening to your body? - People hate it because I just relate it right, you're playing God's work. And people don't like to hear that, but it's a fact. And if you don't want me to say that,

well, you're playing your body set up. And you can say whatever you want and say that somebody is playing aside like I said or whatnot, it's very, very evident what happens. And then this is like I said it goes with steroid,

use it goes with GLP ones, it goes with anything that tricks your body and it's doing something

- Absolutely.

“- That's what it's just people, you know what it is”

as people have this mindset or one track mind you're telling them what to do. You're trying to control them.

I always say, "Dude, you dad, do whatever you want."

- Yeah. - We're not gonna lose sleep over it. I'm just glad you're sharing so that people understand coming from a woman that went through it to explain.

Okay, so now we know what it does hormonally. How does that affect your skin? - Absolutely. So like I mentioned, there's those four key ways. It's impacts your hormonal balance.

It is going to be impacting your liver. It's going to be altering your gut's microbiome and depleting your body of key nutrients. We'll guess what four big drivers of acne heart is gonna be your gut, your detox, your hormones,

and nutrients. - Who would have thought? - Who would have thought that, you know, the things that are going on in your body is leading to you dealing with acne

because acne is an external symptom of an internal issue. And for all of these years and decades, it's been treated like a topical problem with topicals, with antibiotics, with acne, tame, aspirin, and lactone,

but they're just treating the symptom they're not treating what's causing it. - I love that. Okay, now we're getting somewhere deep that nobody talks about.

Tell me, since the gut, we know it's so widely discussed

and understood now like it never was.

So I, I, I temper what I'm gonna say here 'cause I like to be fair about pulling punches about, you know, what we're told and just, but let's face reality here.

“They're trained a certain way and that's what they do.”

Now that we understand more, can you just discuss like what it is, got wise that we need to look out for that could cause this problem and how do we potentially prevent this? - Yeah, and I think it's a really important conversation

to have 'cause a lot of people have a misconception about gut health where they'll say, "Oh, I've worked on my gut." And I say, "Okay, well, great, what would be done?" Like, "Oh, I take it for a body."

And I say, "Okay, well, that's one tool in the toolbox and do you even need that probiotic? Can't, like, do you need those strains? Is it something completely different?" So I like to explain to people that gut health is more

than just a trendy term of all I'm working on, my gut health, I drink kombucha or whatever. Is you have to be looking at, well, what's going on in your gut?

For our acne sufferers, there is almost always

some type of digestive dysfunction. So whether they've low stomach acid, where they don't have enough stomach acid to be breaking their food down. So that's happening.

You can be in the best diet in the world, but if you're not absorbing your nutrients, then you're not getting everything, like the nutrients, the proteins, the healthy fats that your body, your hormones, your skin,

needs to function into repair. And if it's not being broken down, then that becomes a perfect little buffet for all of the bad bacteria in yeast in your gut. When the bacteria in yeast overgrow,

we're going to be dealing with more inflammation. It's going to be contributing to intestinal permeability or the heat gut. It is going to be leading to symptoms like float, constipation diarrhea.

And that's just from having low stomach acid. And with the clients we've worked with, like conservatively over 90% of them have had low stomach acid and they don't even know it. 'Cause like, "Oh, I don't have any gut issue."

It's something like, "Well, your skin is a gut issue." And then, like I mentioned, is we see a lot of yeast overgrow. So Candida, bacteria overgrowth, like staff and strap we see quite often.

And then we'll also be seeing the heat gut where they're gut lining is just so inflamed that it is now, you know, allowing undigested food particles, toxins, bacteria, things into the blood stream, it shouldn't be there.

And then causing body-wide inflammation, which is leading to acne. And that's just the tip of the iceberg that we're dealing with. - What are some of the drivers of low stomach acid? How would somebody know that they have that going on?

- So a big one is gonna be stress, you know, and here in North America, I think we all live a pretty stressful lifestyle. Especially the bulk of our clientele late 20s to but they're mid 40s.

So they're in that, you know, they're a career and they might have a family that if people are taking care of, they're dealing with a health issue. So that stress is going to be depleting their stomach acid.

Maybe we have had a growing up eating a really poor diet. We've grown up just destroying our health where a lot of the millennials partied quite a bit growing up. So like, have we just... That's one of the millennials really need to repair their got health.

Let's just put it that way. So I just feel like for our clients so stress is a major driver for some of my acid issues. - So nervous system plays a key role here. - It's one of our core pillars

and what's so interesting to learn is, nobody ever wants to do it. They're all like, well, no, give me the supplement I need to take. And I'm like, you can't out supplement a fried nervous system.

- No. - Like there's, you can't take all the Auschwaganda in the world and expect your nervous system to calm down. - Yeah, you know, I spent so many years focused on the fitness, the nutrition. And those are very, very important.

But I was missing the most important. - The most important piece. - Yeah, 'cause, you know, even at spiritual as I am 'cause I say it starts with God,

“but you have to get in the right state of mind”

'cause I would do my prayers feel good and then go right back to, you know, where I was 'cause my nervous system was so out of whack.

you're thinking or feeling, they're so bound up and gone.

“You don't, you don't think about them on the outside,”

but you are internally and don't even realize it. How big of a role does the nervous system then sit so play in your skin? - It's probably the biggest role that it plays because when you peel back, gut issues,

guess what's impacting your gut, your nervous system. When you peel back, detoxification and hormones and all of these issues, your nervous system truly is at the core. So you can do all the gut protocols, eat all the healthy foods, take all the supplements,

but if you're not addressing your nervous system regulation,

you can almost never truly heal.

And, you know, I have this one example of a client that I always think about, and she was our longest work client that we had, we worked with her for three years. And, she would, her skin was looking great and then a plateaued, we couldn't get any further.

It was looking better, but not where we wanted it. She shared with us some very traumatic things that had happened to her in childhood. And when she started to process them, work on regulating her nervous system,

talking to a counselor, getting these traumas out of her body, it was like an actual miracle happen. And we just watched her acting, like physically received off of her face, all from allowing her nervous system to feel safe.

- See, and that's, I think some people, you go day by day and you don't realize sometimes even the stress is you're going through until you sit down and they evaluate. - Yeah.

- And you're like, man, why am I getting so antsy or why can't I focus away on my angry all the time

or whatever, but you just kind of get in a pattern

and you do it, and it's hard to see. - And I think that's the issue is so many people like, oh, I'm not stressed, and we're like, what do you mean you're not stressed now? You're like, oh, well, you know, I wake up at five

and I go into my hit classes and I get the kids ready and then I'm doing this and then I'm picking the kids up and I have this work deadline and I'm like, did you hear all of the things you just listed out and you're not stressed?

And it's because we get so used to our stress that it's our operating norm. It's like our, how we love to operate and you don't realize until you start listing out.

“That's why we often will get our clients to write out”

all the things that we're responsible for. And they're like, oh, I didn't even, yeah, no, my nervous system's not doing well. - We had to sit there and say I have time over and over and I had to process this and say it and keep saying it

and doing it and trying to regulate, and I had a guest on yesterday who does scalar energy. I mean, yes, and he was talking about 99% of the people are stuck in fighter flight and you don't even know it.

- I, 100% agree. - And we were talking about getting to hear because you're normally like this and I'll tell you what, Katie, now that I feel like I'm right here,

I mean, it's like the whole world has opened up. - I can imagine, right? - It is and I literally, now every morning, I don't wanna miss breath work sessions already. I go outside and do it myself.

- I love that. - Yeah, and I set up like a playlist of my kind of music that gets me going and it goes like slow to up to. - Let's like, let's fucking go. (laughing)

- Yeah, so, but it's made me look younger as where I'm going with this, I feel younger. I look younger. I don't have as many normal aches in the morning or even when I don't sleep as well.

I'm like, let's go. - I feel like, let's go. - It's incredible. - Yeah, but you see it in the face. - Absolutely, I know like, when we have clients come in,

I don't even need to know what their routine is 'cause you can physically see it like being with acne, we get them to submit photos. And we're like, you can see the stress in their eyes even. And it's like, I love looking at photos

from when they start with us to when they finish with us because it's not the skin that I'm looking at. I'm actually looking at their eyes. They look alive again. - Okay, so let me give you a scenario here.

I come to you and I say, Katie, my skin is a mess. You start evaluating me. You don't just go, okay, let's put you on acutane or whatever the shit is. Now that there's not even no

because I hate that stuff so much, but we'll get into that. - Absolutely. - So, I come into you new client brand new. Do you take the time then to address my stress,

my blood panels, are you looking at those things? My diet and ask me those kind of questions? - I ask you so many questions. You're going to get annoyed with me. We have a very, my two and I have a very intensive intake list.

“There's questions on there like, why are you asking me that?”

Like, we're asking what you're oral health. We're asking like, do you have past traumas? We're evaluating everything. And then we're looking at not just what you're eating and the supplements you're taking,

but we're looking at your lifestyle. We're looking at like, are you eating in a food? Like, when are you eating? What type of support system do you have in place? What's your stress levels like?

Like, I said the past traumas. So we're looking at their intake. We're also really big and traditional Chinese medicine and face mapping, which we've a little bit tweaked over the years because we've worked with so many clients.

So we'll be looking at locations of breakouts as well, but we also run functional testing for a neighbor private clients. - Okay. - Because with acne, there isn't a cookie cutter approach where like, take these supplements, do this one thing

your acne clears with the thousands of clients we've worked

if I've never seen one client have the exact same root cause

of somebody else. Sure, they might both have got issues, but maybe client A is dealing with canned data, low stomach, acid, poor methylation.

and like too much DHEI.

“Like, there's so many different things that can be going on.”

So it really does need to be tailored to the individuals. So this is why we're a big fan of functional testing. We use a hair trace mental analysis with every client

'cause it gives us an incredible overview of the whole body.

Like, I love a GI map of stool analysis, got Zoomer, Dutch tests, all of those, but we can see so much in a hair test that we need to see personality traits coming through, which is really interesting.

So we love knowing what's actually going on in your body. So we can tell you the pathway to do it 'cause so many acne suffer is they've been throwing spaghetti at the wall for years. And you don't have acne for the same reason

and another person has acne. - So I've got a couple questions. I'm gonna give you certain scenarios here. So like, for instance, you come to me with low test or I want TRT and I say no,

we're gonna look for, for example, if your SHBG is high, then I say man, we can lower this and we might be able to free this up and get you going. So if I come to you and say, "Hey, my skin looks like shit."

You know, I need this cream or should I take this wrinkle cream or whatever. You're going, hold up a minute, let's look at some blood panels and see if there's something going on causing it.

- Yeah, so we'll be looking at specifically their hair trace mineral. Like if they have blood panels, we'll bring them in. - Okay. - But a lot of like the regular blood panels

are getting from their doctor one are gonna be complete. Too often aren't gonna be comprehensive enough to be looking at like the drivers of acne 'cause it's often like gut imbalances and like a blood test isn't gonna be like,

"Oh, you have step-in, step-in straw for, "Oh, you have low stomach acid or you have a copper "in zinc imbalance." So we're looking at those things. And even before what's interesting

is even before we get into supplements and testing, is we spent about four weeks working on foundations. Like non-sexy boring foundations. We're gonna be like, "But Katie, that's not fun. "Are you sleeping enough?

"Are you eating enough food in a day? "So many women are under-eaters. "Beating enough protein.

“"Are you getting variety and rotation in your meals?”

"Are you working on your stress levels? "And are you balancing your blood sugar? "And are you having a bowel movement every day?" Like these are the unsexy things that we need to have in place first

before we jump into any type of protocol. - I'm gonna do something with you then 'cause I think you're ready for something like this. - We're gonna do one to five,

five being most important,

one being least important on the effect on your skin. These are just health things, right? - Let's do it. - Okay, let's start with the easy one. We're gonna talk about it, got health.

- Yeah, I'm gonna say five. - Cellular health. - Can I keep saying five? - You can say five all day long. - I just say five all the way across the board.

- I'll get you on one that you're like, "I don't know, liver health." - Five. - Okay. - Let's do Ferretin and Iron.

- Let's do Ferretin and Iron. - For acne specifically, I'm gonna say 2.5 to 3. - Okay, yeah. - We're gonna get, I gotta get you.

- Yeah, you gotta. - I can't give you the most basic. How about kidney function? - Actually quite important. I would say like a four.

- Four.

“- What about like for a man like prostate health?”

- I'm gonna have to put that around the four as well because like prostate health, it's for men that's good, huge part of their hospital. Like we need to be looking at, it's hard for the individual body systems.

I wanna say five for all of them 'cause your body's, it's an open concept, works based on different silos. - What about like progesterone for women? - That would be, for acne specifically,

I'm gonna say that's like a four or five. - Four. - Okay, that's what I was thinking. Something like really strong, hormonally, when a progesterone estrogen testosterone,

I would imagine how about pretty high implication level when it comes to that. Stress would be five for sure. I'm sure, what about like circadian rhythm sleep? - That's actually something we do talk a bit quite a bit.

I'm gonna put that at like the four and that's because all of these things is impacting your stress and your nervous system. - Yeah. - Because if you're not getting quality sleep,

like your sleep is when your body cleans out, how sick, your sleep is when your cortisol is coming back down. So if you're burning the candle at both ends, that's gonna be impacting your cortisol,

your nervous system regulation.

And what's really interesting is I always say

you're today started yesterday at bedtime. 'Cause think about it. If you go to bed late, you wake up and you're like already hitting the snooze button. You're like, oh my God, I need like three coffees

to get through the day. So now you're rushing out the door, you're already starting your day stressed. You've grabbed a coffee and maybe grabbed like a bagel and so your blood sugars shot for the morning

and then you're rushing through your morning. Your blood sugar dips. So now you're gonna binge eat on something, refine carbohydrate that bag of chips, that slice of pizza, that whatever that is,

and then after noon, you're like, oh my gosh, it's three, I'm exhausted, I need another coffee. So you have another coffee and then you go into dinner and you have an eatin' all day so you're starting, then you binge eat all night,

then you snack all evening until 11pm and then you start the whole process over again. So really like your sleep and circadian rhythm is super important.

this gonna be polarizing. Ooh, sun. This is polarizing. So I would say directly for acne, like I would put it at a three,

but I think for your health of five. - Yeah. - Like we need sun and so many of us are terrified of the sun. - Art, wait a minute, are you telling me it's okay to go in the sun?

- My gosh. - Is that what you're saying? - I'm saying it's okay. - Oh gosh. End of world. - I think my DMs are gonna explode without one. - Uh-oh. - As an acne nutritionist.

- And then what's one of those things that pisses me off to no end? - Seriously. - I could do a whole podcast on the importance of this.

- I mean, I always preface it when I say get some light.

I don't mean stay out there for five hours a day. - No, no, no, no, no. - Yeah. - But, but. - But.

“- How important is it to get out there 20 minutes a day?”

- That's how you're gonna invite him indeed. Like if we're constantly covering up putting all the SPF on, we're terrified of the sun, the majority of us are putting on really toxic sunscreens anyway. - Right.

- Which we're now showing that certain ingredients in the sunscreens have been linked to be carcinogens. We're when they're exposed to the sunlight. They're seeing that they have two tumors in animal studies. And we're slapping that on and going out in the sun.

So like we have to remember our body needs sunshine. And like I said, I'm not saying going out for 10 hours and this air is on a sun here in baking. But getting 15, 20 minutes of unprotected sun a day is vital for you.

- Yeah, my sentiments. I people always go to one extreme or the other. - Yeah, there's no middle ground. - No, and it's like, dude, you could, I mean, this is extreme,

but you could flood yourself with too much water

and cut yourself in the sun.

- Absolutely. - You need to live. - Yes. - So people should just like understand when people say things. There's, you can't just take supplements for everything.

- No. - You have to get it naturally. Food, you know, sun, different things that we need. I had the same problem with people that would want to like substitute their whole day

with protein powders and it's like brother. - No. - That's not how that works. - No. - It's a supplement because you supplement it.

- Yeah, it's meant to supplement something not be the entirety of your diet. - Shit. - Yeah. - Let me ask you some stuff than about foods.

Also, oh, let me ask you a couple more that I just sort of trace mineralized. Like selenium and iodine. How much of a factor do those play on skin? - Well, they're super important.

They're like, buy, like, I don't wanna say buy factor,

“but they're so important for your journals, right?”

If we don't have the trace minerals, like trace minerals are great for your journals, they are great for cellular hydration. - Yep. - We're if you're just drinking tons of water,

but it's not getting into yourselves, like we're not doing it any justice. So trace minerals can be fantastic. - I'm a massive advocate for giving up on you, though.

- Yeah. - Okay, let's talk about some nutrients and things that are what I would say you wanna prioritize, 'cause you know, when I was back in the '90s and 2000s, it's like, oh, if you eat greasy,

it's gonna make your breakout potato chips, they're gonna make you break it. - Chocolate and greasy, yeah. - How true is that? - Well, it's, you know, especially chocolate,

it's not the chocolate that's giving you break out. It's the ingredients in the chocolate. The dairy, the sugar, the conventional ingredients, that refined oils and the same thing is the fried foods, it's those refined vegetable oils,

that is leading to inflammation your body. That's impacting your liver and impacting your hormones and your gut health. So we need to just be eating smart on eating like real-hole foods.

- What kind of oils would you avoid and what choice do you think are okay? - I would definitely avoid the seed oils. - Oh, no. - Shocking?

- Oh, no. - I think I do really well, living in Arizona since I've been here. - Yeah. - I have so many seed oil free.

- There's quite a few here. - There's quite a few here. - Yeah, it's fantastic. So I'm a big fan of, again, depending on what you're cooking with, right? - Right, right, right.

- So like an avocado oil, love an avocado oil, coconut oil, extra virgin, olive oil for salad dressings, you know, putting flaxseed oil as like a finishing oil

never heating a flaxseed.

So all of those unrefined oils can be really, really helpful. - Yeah, I like my cook everything in grass bed butter now. - Oh yeah. - What about, let's go down the line of importance

with nutrient, so let's start with healthy fats. - Healthy fats are crucial, like, your body needs fats to produce hormones.

“So if you want to have healthy hormones,”

you need to be eating healthy fats. - Right, so they have a pretty strong correlation with healthy skin. - Absolutely. - You know, and this is why I asked that first,

and I've documented this quite well, I didn't eat any fats for like 15 years, out of just straight direct fear. - Yeah. - And I go back and look and it's like man,

it's like, it's just-- - Well, it's called to re-grow up in, it was very like fear fats. - Yeah, but I was, I'm an nutritionist, I was coaching people eat fats, but I was the, I was the, the exception.

- Yep. - And I, when I started to eat them, I went from like 15 grams a day to 130. - Mm-hmm. - And I see that, and I go back and look and I say,

I look 10 years younger now than I did at the time and starving myself. - Absolutely. - And it's just the impact that it has on the glow - Oh, that's a question. - Yeah, I'll leave the mental clarity,

that's a whole mother story, but the skin glow. - It's 'cause the hydration, right? Like, the healthy fats are also helping produce

You have, you know, having really strong lipids

and allowing your skin to just have that glowy bounce to it. - Yeah, I started even using creams that are phospholipid-based and you know, I'm talking like regular lotion creams, not just face cream, just everything and it's just based around having good healthy fats

within them and plumping the skin. So then what about proteins? - A huge, foundational. - And especially for women, our chronic under-eaters are protein.

I rarely have to beg a man to eat more protein.

“But a woman, I'm like, are you eating enough protein?”

Yeah, yeah, no way, I'm like, well, what do you have? What are we talking here? And then I go, I might eat maybe, like a half a chicken breast at dinner. I'm like, okay, so we're maybe getting 25 grams,

like the meat for lucky and proteins are so vital because your liver needs protein and liver is important for our acne, guess what your skin needs to repair itself and to build. It needs protein.

And if we're chronically under-eating protein, we're also not getting like the building blocks that our body needs to build. Like we need the amino acids in the proteins and we also need to be getting protein in for a blood sugar.

So if we are not eating enough protein and we're also not eating fats because we're terrified of it and we're just relying on grains essentially and fruits, like what's going to be going on with our blood sugar? Right.

Okay, well then that will lead us to the dreaded carbs. Yes, the dreaded carb question. Yeah, so what kind of effect? And breakdowns, complex, simple, what's the difference? What's good, what's bad, or are they all good,

or are they all bad? Well, no, we need carbs, right? Like, I'll be careful. I'm like, really polarizing things today. We, our body needs carbohydrates.

And again, growing up in that like 80s and 90s early 2000s, diet, culture, carbs are bad, fats are bad. Like everything's bad, just eat air basically. Yeah. So wonder so many people of eating disorders

based on that culture we grew up in.

“But carbohydrates, how do you think our body gets fuel?”

Like how do we get that glucose? So we want to be having carbohydrates, but whole food carbohydrates. We're not, you know, having refined potato chips and like refined bagels and muffins and like just eating those pastas and white rice

is all of the time. We can be having our whole foods, but let's eat them with our proteins and our healthy fats to keep your blood sugar level stable. Yes.

Maybe we're looking at like squashes and sweet potatoes and you know, those really great carbohydrates that isn't going to be spiking your blood sugar.

Yeah, and you know, I always touch teach people to go down the line.

Have your protein and your fats and your carbs and that way you're going to stop the spikes. That's what I tell them. Yes, and you'll, everything will run smoothly. And then go walk after you eat.

Go walk 10 minutes. That's it. I actually go right in my bike now after I eat. And I just go like 25 minutes. I do like this prayer time right in my bike.

I come home and I don't feel heavy or anything. You know, I always tell clients go for a quick walk after there's been minutes, even if it's too cold out. I love in Canada. I'd wait to call the winter, walk around the house a few times.

But you don't have to do walk like a fast pace. Either just move. Yeah, move your body is so important. And I love that you said, focus on your protein. You're fat and then your carbs,

because so many of us focus the backwards. Yes. I'm going to eat a whole plate of pasta. And I'll save that chicken to the end. And I only room for two bites.

I know. Got to do it back the other way. Yes. When I eat, I do a meal of like whole eggs, avocados, toast, and vegetables, right?

And I start right with the eggs, right into the avocado and then work my way backwards. And then you feel really good. Yep. And I'm like, man, I'm not hungry for four or five hours.

That's the thing is when you eat enough food in a day, it is like a miracle's happened. You know how many years I spent miserable hungry all day. Yeah. And everything I did and I'd tell my wife, now I see you have no idea

how many times we were out supposedly doing something fun and inside it was miserable, not because of you or not because of the thing, because of me. Yeah. You know, and it's like, man, now I can, I get up.

If we have to go somewhere and we're gone five or six hours, one meal and it's like, man, I'm good all day. You're the stamina all day, all day. Absolutely.

And I always tell people, if you can start with one thing,

let it be to eat enough food in a day. Yeah. Like, I got one for you. I just thought of caffeine and coffee. How does that affect your--

Oh, I am going to, like, out of scale of one to five, I'm going to put it as, like, a four. OK. And let me explain, though, please. So with a lot of our acne sufferers,

their nervous systems are shot, their journals are shot, and they're surviving on coffee. With acne, if it's going to be-- if we're drinking copious amounts of coffee, we are going to be impacting our cortisol,

and which is going to be driving-- sorry, we're impacting our cortisol and our blood sugar. It's going to be increasing seed and production in the skin, which is the sticky oily substance that clogs pores and leads to more brigades.

OK.

“So it's not that you have to give up coffee forever.”

But let's say that we're really working and rebalancing the body. We have to repair all these body systems. Can we temporarily hold back on the coffee?

So a lot of our clients are like, well, I don't sleep at night. Well, you're having two cups of coffee for a PM. Let's move that up a little bit to, like, before noon. And then, if you do want, you know, once we've done their therapeutic protocols,

and we want to add the caffeine back at the coffee back in,

“could we start with, like, a decafron organic swiss water decafinated?”

Because a lot of people, they, like, the experience of the coffee-- I was just going to tell you, I don't drink it for caffeine. No, I drink it because I love the experience. Yes, yeah, yeah, and so on a sewer. It's exactly what it is.

And clients are like, oh, my gosh, I never thought about it.

That way, you're right. And look forward to making it, having something warm to drink, drinking it through the morning. Or maybe you swap it from Machia. I'm a big Machia fan, personally.

I'm a cult of Machia followers. Really? I've created quite the cult to be honest. It's getting out of hand. You've got to talk to Queen, yeah.

Oh, she's like Machia Queen. We're going to be best friends. I already know. Machia is-- because it has the altheone in it, right? You mean, you know, acid.

That's giving you the alert comm instead of the heart and fights, fast, spike, and crash of a coffee. So then if it gives you the alert comm, is that something you can have later in the day or should you not do that?

If you're struggling with sleep, I'm going to say, like, let's have it earlier in the day.

“It has less caffeine, obviously, in a cup of black coffee.”

But if you're somebody that's struggling with their sleep, I would definitely recommend pulling back on the kind of caffeine. I'm kind of a big tea guy. It's not that I don't eat you.

So I'm just not a big tea guy, but I'm Machia's great. I love a Machia lot, eh? Yeah. Absolutely. And it makes you feel good.

I feel physically unwell drinking a caffeinated coffee. Like, I actually feel like I've done some type of drug because it makes me feel sick and nauseous. It's a very strange feeling. So if I have coffee, it's generally a tea guy.

I really like love coffee, but I've got to the point where I'm very specific and careful with what I buy and who I get it from. Absolutely. But I dress mine up, so I do protein powder.

I do SCT oil in it. And then I have this gut repair thing. Amazing. Dr. Vincent, Pedri Max, I don't know if you know him, but he does a lot of gut work.

And I just enjoy it. Yeah. You know what I mean? Well, shit, when I'm working during the day and I have that, I'm just like, oh, man, it comes

me down, which is weird because it shouldn't. I know, but when you're getting a really good quality coffee, right? We're not just getting like a Maxwell house or folders. I'm from Canada, so those are there.

But maybe like a dunk in dough and it's coffee. Yeah, we can say here in the States. And like when you're getting probably an organic mold free quality, it's a very different type of coffee. People don't know or understand

because they're used to drinking gas station because they're on the run or something.

And you just don't know, I always spend the money on it

because it's so just amazing. I didn't start drinking coffee till like two or three years ago. Oh, really? No. And what was the reason?

Honestly, my mom had stayed with us and she was a massive coffee drinker. And I tasted a little bit and then I tasted again and I bought her cake-up thing broke. And I bought her one and I was like,

I told Queenie Skirt, let's just buy one, which is horrible by the way to drink out of. So I progressed from that and then I switched over into biohacking from like bodybuilding and fitness and then I met Dave and then I met him about the danger.

And then I discovered the arrow press from him. I started pressing my coffee and then it was like, this just thing I do every day. Yeah, we don't want to hold the world. Yeah, I carry that with me when I travel.

Yeah, absolutely. Everywhere. You can't not know. No. And my skin also, once again, has looked fabulous.

“But I think that it's tempered upon everything”

else I'm doing. All right, skin care time. Yes, big topic. First thing I want to ask you, I brought it up earlier, is accutane.

Yes. So explain, just to me, I'm just going to tell you what I know about it, which is an aton is that it's kind of, most one of the more widely used things when people have an acne problem, kind of like a statin

for cholesterol, right? Would you compare those equally? Yeah, so what's interesting about accutane is it's supposed to be prescribed for severe widespread scarring acne.

OK. It is prescribed for way less. Really? I have seen clients come in and they're like, their acne would not be considered severe widespread

in scarring when they were prescribed it. So I feel like it's instead of being held back for very severe cases. It's being used for less and less and less. Accutane is generally not, depending on the doctor,

but it's not often going to be the first step. The first step is going to be antibiotics. Well, they'll do a topicals, but we'll often see some type of antibiotic. The record, get ready to have a panic attack,

is the record for client taking antibiotics straight as seven years with no stopping. A client came in seven years on antibiotics. Did not stop once. And we said, well, why didn't we stop?

I feel like, like, well, the doctor never checked back in.

I mean, it was just a unlimited prescription. We were like, oh, okay. All right, really. So you can imagine the gut issues we dealt with there. And that was, in the, we see this all the time,

like years and years and years,

Birth control will be another one,

“screw on a lactone, but acutane, I've had clients,”

and again, like some people to get acutane have incredible results. Like that does happen. And to my experience of clients we work with, we've had clients take it two, three, four, five, six times.

And their acne comes back every time, generally between the six months to 18 month mark. - Do you know, like, what the mechanism of action is on acutane how it works? - So acutane is a systemic drug.

So it is impacting your whole body. It is a lot of people have really bad side effects. It's very drying to the body. So you can extract leading lips, very dry skin.

There's always a purging stage

where their skin gets 10 times worse before it gets better. It can, you can actually have life long side effects with your eyesight. So I remember when I first started doing this, like over a decade ago,

I read like a stat that I believe, and this might be wrong now, but if you were a pilot in the US military and you were taking acutane, you couldn't fly for a period of time

while on it or afterwards, 'cause of the impacts it has on your eyesight. - Really? - Yeah, that was a stat from while ago, so we had to look at it again,

but that just goes to show you how impactful it can be on your body. It's extremely hard on your liver, and because we're at least in Canada, because of the ways that it can cause severe birth,

the fact that if you're a woman on acutane,

“you have to be taking birth control long side it.”

- Wow. - So there's toxicity within it than if it's hammering your liver. - It is extremely hard, a side effects on the body.

- You know, it seems to me that there's quite a few things that do treatments that have a nasty effect on the liver, like stuff for your toenails and just do things that, and it's like, man, are these really worth it?

- I know, and you want to, did you ever deal with acne? - No, not at all. - Yeah, so what's really interesting is when you have acne, it almost blinds you to any of the side effects,

because it impacts you on such a deep level. We're a lot of people, if you haven't dealt with it, it's hard to understand that concept, that it's not just a physical issue. It's a very much mental issue, emotional issue.

It's like, I like to explain it like a wet weighted blanket that you're just carrying around with you all day, because we live in such a visual society, that when your skin is the first thing everybody sees, you're constantly feeling judged.

You don't want to go on dates. You don't want to be intimate with your partner. You don't want to ask for that job promotion. You don't think you're being taken seriously at work. Some clients don't even leave the house,

they will cancel plans, they will say no to weddings, they won't go on vacations. I have some clients that have said, like, I haven't had a photo with my children in the last six years, and I don't want to look back 20 years

“now and not have any memories with my children, right?”

And those really impact me. So it's just, I can see why they get so, they feel hopeless, right? And they're like, I don't even care. I will do whatever I have to,

my long-term health effects be damned. So I do understand that where they're coming from, 'cause they're just so desperate, isn't really good word for it. - We're kind of mental problems

than can that bring? - That's actually just going to exacerbate the problem, right? 'Cause if you could, that stress is going to be worse. - That's a lot of clients are like, "Hey, I don't, this is like a hamster,

"with like, hey, good off." - Yeah. - I'm stressed because of my acne, but I know I have acne because of my stress. - Right.

- What do I do? And that, again, that nervous system piece,

that nervous system work is going to be some of the most important,

but most difficult work that you're going to do in a process. - Yeah, 'cause otherwise you're robbing Peter to pay Paul and put him on 75 different medicines. - Exactly. - So you're taking one to calm down,

and then you're taking another for your acne, and then the one that's taking you to calm down could have a side effect, give you more acne. - Exactly. - It's, yeah, it's crazy out there.

The acne world is very, very multifaceted and complex. - Wow. - Okay, so that sucks. What's the most common age or age bracket where people start to have problems?

And also, what about women in menopause? Did they tend to have that problem? 'Cause of the hormone fluctuation? - What's interesting is we have clients, there's two groups of clients that we have.

The clients I've had at their whole life, Katie, I've had this since I was eight years old. I'm 38 now, I've been hadn't had this for decades. I was told I would grow out of it. I'm 40, so one of my growing out of it.

Then I have the other clients that have developed it in their adulthood. So maybe they've had it the 21, 28, 35, early 40's, going with a pair of menopause. And what's interesting, those clients,

like literally always say, just come in and know where.

I don't know what happened, it just came out of nowhere. And then we start to pull it back in. I like to explain it to them that your health is a bucket. And over the years, we're slowly feeling that bucket up with trauma, food poisoning.

You gotta pair a site, you took these medications, yeah, the stress are happening. And all of a sudden, it's like we get to that last part of the bucket and things start to spill over. - Yeah.

- So what may seem like not a big thing to you, it was the last straw for the body and the body is like, whoa, okay, we got to fix something in here. So I do see a lot of clients, you know, starting to get acne after they've had kids

of the birth control, because they've been on it

“for 10, 20, some kinds of 30 years on birth control.”

And they come off of it, now they're getting all these skin issues. - When it's time for like your period every month, is that a time where you could have acne breakouts 'cause I've seen that too, where people have them just at that time.

- Yes, so we do have clients that have more cyclical breakouts. So maybe they have it in the week leading up to their period. And that's where we're looking at, you know, is there an estrogen dominance issue? What's our progesterone looking like?

But a lot of people will also get it around ovulation, which is when we're having that kind of testosterone surge. So maybe it's that antrogen component that we want to be looking at. And we really do look at those cyclical patterns,

but a lot of the times in clients come in, they say, I have hormonal acne, I'm like, yes, and you have hormonal acne, but guess what drives a lot of your hormones, you're got in your detoxification system. - Yeah.

- And what's interesting is for 90% of our clients,

we don't even touch their sex hormones.

- Yeah. - When you give the body what it needs, it can brace self-regulate your hormones. So for our clients dealing with hormonal acne, we rebalance their gut microbiome and with that unique subset of microbes in the gut

of the esterbolum, which is going to metabolize estrogen. So if you're gut struggling, if you're not having a bowel movement every single day, you're just recirculating estrogen. So that hormonal acne is actually coming from your constipation.

And when we start to clear up their gut health, get their detox organs working while that are filtering your hormones, the hormones are able to self-regulate. A lot of people don't get a lot of fiber

and they're dieting a lot of people are lacking. Does that have any kind of effect? - Huge, yeah. - Yeah. Something that I've been talking about for over a decade now is the importance

of your bowel movements on your skin. And I remember maybe the eight and nine years ago, I did a post on social media about like poop and acne. And the dermatologist students that came at me, like out of the woodwork was insane.

They're like, how could you think that bowel movements of anything to do with your health and your skin and duck, duck, to duck, to duck, like, well. Look at now everybody, look, doctors, and now talking about the importance of your bowel movements.

“But you have to remember that if your body's not getting rid”

of your waist every single day, where do you think it's going? - You think that'd be kind of obvious. - Kind of obvious. - I don't see how there's any kickback on that. Your full of waist and savage.

- Yes. - Stupid man. - It's crazy and to think that that wouldn't have an impact. It's like if you're stool sitting too long in your digestive tract, you talks in Symbacteria in hormones, it's supposed to be getting rid of,

it's going to absorb back in the body. Recirculate, now we have higher levels inflammation, toxicity and hormone imbalance 'cause we're not having a bowel movement every single day. It's shocking.

- You know, I have been, like I said, I went through a reset, so I tried to be very temperate on my insults or my thoughts, but I'll tell you this. When something's so damn obvious like, for instance, and I'm just gonna say it because I think at this point

we know, go into a restaurant with a mask on and taking it off to eat and then having to put it back on to go take a walk to the bathroom, that type of shit. When you start telling me that type of stuff, I just shut off, I can't talk to you.

- No. - I just can't. - I agree. - I mean, I don't care who that pisses off. That's just like common sense. - Yeah.

- So when you say something like that, it's like, is that not common sense? - Is it not common sense that a bowel movement

would not be one of the most important things?

And it's like, you can't sort of do incandita protocols and detoxifications if you're not pooping every day. - Exactly. - Exactly. - It's not going anywhere. So bowel movements is actually the very first thing we'd look at alongside quarters on blood sugar.

- Okay, what about people that drink alcohol on a kind of a normal basis? What does that have some sort of an effect? - I can we all just agree that zero amount of alcohol is the best form of alcohol for the body, right?

- I agree 100%. - It's, and again, coming from a millennial, like we're the same age, so like, yeah. - I feel like our generation aren't the drunkest generation that ever existed.

I mean, I'd have to say it's probably a high probability. - Yeah, my liver probably agrees. Like I'm so repairing damage from my 20s. - It took me a long time to get mine, right? - Yeah, so I get it, like, being in that partying phase,

“but you have to understand that like alcohol”

is a poison to the body, and a lot of people like, oh, well, it helps me sleep. I'm like, help you fall asleep? - It doesn't help you sleep well. - Well, you do not get into REM.

- No. - So zero amount of alcohol is the best amount. And luckily, it's what's interesting. It's all my 30s clients in about 30s, 40s, 50s. They're like, no, I need my glass of wine.

Like, how am I gonna wind down all the weekend? It's a stressful week, and then all of my, like, Gen Z clients, and none of them drink. - Yeah. - The 20s, like, oh, no, I don't drink alcohol.

- No. - I love that. - It's great. - And I used to, and I say this, that if you wanna fall asleep fast,

alcohol may be the best thing, and if you wanna sleep well, it's definitely the worst. - Definitely the worst. - Oh, some of the worst sleep nights I ever had waking up in two and three hours was those nights.

- Absolutely. And like, you know, everyone knows it's not good for the liver, but it's not good for your gut health. It's irritating to the gut lining, your hormones, your blood sugar, your, all of the things.

- You know what, when you want something to go your way,

- A thousand percent, that's human nature. - It is, and so it's, this is the two things with the alcohol. Oh, my red wine's got respiratory health. - That's all.

- Take the supplement. - Yeah. - Go eat some food. - Exactly. - That is, that is up to you.

- I hear that all the time. - That is the worst damn excuse I've ever heard in my life. - And I grew up in a Italian household. - Me too.

- I understand the whole wine dinner culture. - My family's full of Italian, and I despise wine. - You're like, I can't do that. - I hate it. - Yeah.

- I mean, and here's another one too. And I've lived this, and like, I had to go to prison to stop drinking, okay? - Yeah. - So I hate it.

- Yeah, so, um, when you, when you start to say, oh, but once in a while, and once in a while, and all of this, okay, fine, it may not kill you right now, but this is like, you, you said it perfectly. Every time you drink it, this poison going into your system.

And you can call it fear mug, whatever. It's a fact, it's proven, drink to your fucking wheels fall off, whatever. But we know what we're saying.

“Every time you have one, what kind of an effect does it have?”

- Yeah, like, just this sleep alone where, you know, it's, you're not gonna really get a deep sleep. It's gonna be impacting your blood sugar. You know, the next day you're gonna feel crappy, you know, you're gonna, you're like,

I need to take every profan, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna go and eat that crappy food in the bag of chips. It's like, it's not just the alcohol, it's all of the things that come after. - It's, it's a multitude of cascading things that happen.

And I wish people would stop that. Everybody wants to say fear mongering when it doesn't roll the way they want it to roll. - Every time, and like you said,

is people will always look for the answer they want

to the question. - Yeah, it has. And it's like, like, and I say this all the time, I'm not your dad, do whatever you want. I'm simply just laying it out.

I'm not selling you anything. - Yeah, make your own decision. I think that's what's so important is, at least if you have the information of the informed consent or the informed choices

to go in decide what you wanna do with your life. - No, because my mom drank soda every day and smoked cigarettes and lived to be 100. That's the one I get all the time. - All the time.

- Oh man.

“- Like, well, what's the laundry list of medications?”

- Exactly. And how well was that 100 years? Should we live well into our centurion years? - Right, exactly. It's just whatever.

Skincare time. - Yeah, everyone's favorite topic. - Mine too. - Love it. - I modeled in my 20s for a decade,

so I used every skin care under the cellar. - You're familiar? - I am so damn familiar. So let's go down the line then on, because some of these are really expensive.

- I'm an LA, like in a fortune. - Some of the ones that I'll bring up by name that I used, that were like, because I have hypopigmentation. I did, I think I worked a lot through it with some of the skin characters that I used.

And skin medical was kind of the one that helped me with that. But I started with Obaji. So these creams, like, are they really worth the money that we spend on them in your opinion? - I think it depends on the branding, right?

So I depends on the brand, not the branding. Is I like to say that skin care is a tool in the toolbox. - Yeah. - About people say, "Kitty, will I just stop using my skin care?" I'm like, "No, no, we want to have skin care "cause it's helping to reduce the severity, help to help with the scarring,

"the pigmentation, like having a good skin care routine is important.

"I don't think that you always have to be spending

"not righteous amount on all of the high end products. "I understand people of budgets and like we need to work "within their budget. "But I do think if you're gonna spend your money "on one type of skincare product

"is gonna be your serums." So your serums is where the science behind it matters. It's the delivery system matters. You wanted to go deeper into the skin. So if I'm gonna be spending investing my money in something,

it'll be a serum. And then maybe your cleanser or your face cream, you could do a little cheaper. But it really is that science behind it. But again, I have some, I know of some really great brands

that are like $50 or $30 for a product that are phenomenal. And then I've used ones that are a few hundred dollars and they're equally phenomenal. So I think it depends on the brand.

“- How many times a day would you recommend washing your face?”

One to two times a day? I know there's this whole, like, to try and not take talk where it's like, "I don't wash my face in the morning." I think it's gonna be dependent on the person

and where they are. I personally still wash my face twice a day. But we don't wanna be doing it more than that because we're gonna be stripping our skin beer. We wanna be protecting our skin barrier.

So making sure that we aren't overdoing it because we can be drying our skin out, especially if you're using a lot of stacked acids and harsh ingredients. - Okay, so when you wash your face,

I used to have a clear sonic that would-- - Right, yes. - Is that bad or good or how do you recommend washing your face?

- Always have clean hands.

So I find a lot of times those tools can harbor bacteria. And if they're not getting sterilized and clean properly, so the clean hands, making sure that you're singing like your ABCs once or twice to get right into the hairline

under the jawline, if you are wearing makeup, especially in the evening for women,

so maybe you're using an oil-based cleanser to be physically breaking the SPF down or the makeup getting that off

and then doing a second cleanse with like a water-based cleanser

to make sure you're getting it all off, especially if you wear makeup or SPF. - Thoughts on moisturizers 'cause I've had so many different different opinions there. - So I think they're quite important.

And I know especially if people are, oh, I oily skin, I can't moisturize. Well, if we're constantly dehydrating your skin's gonna say, oh, I don't have enough hydration here. I can need to produce more C-bum.

So we're producing more of that sticky oily substance that'll clog the pores and lead to breakout. So like a lighter moisturizer, you don't need to have like a super thick, heavy moisturizer. - Yeah.

- But maybe you need a little bit lighter or moisturizer, gel moisturizer, but it also kind of dictate where you live. - Okay, all right. And then what are some ingredients that are in products

that we need to be aware of that are actually quite harmful

“that are probably in a lot of the things that we use?”

And probably need a full other episode for that, although. This is actually how I got into the health and wellness space. It is I growing up, like I had like a six foot long, I'd make a table for my Kia, had like Mac makeup and all of like the classic to early 2000s make a mess with it.

It was out of hand. And my mom bought, I was probably like 19 at the time. My mom bought me this book called "There's Let In Your Lipstick." And I was like, "Mom, this is BS." I don't have let in my lipstick.

My products are fine. And just so peace here, I started reading. I'm like, "There's no way." And I were sitting in my bedroom, flipping over, bottle off the bottle of being, are you?

In the garbage. Every single product had multiple hormone disrupting ingredients, multiple cancer causing ingredients. And what's interesting is, they say the average woman puts on over 160, 8 chemicals on her body every single day.

'Cause think about it, you wash your face, you wash your teeth, you shampoo your hair, you conditioner, you treatment in your hair spray, you're putting your makeup on, you're putting bronzer. Like, you're putting multiple products a day,

deodorant, body, lotion, hand cream. And all of those ingredients are going into your body. And what's interesting is a lot of,

“I think it was back in the 70s and act was passed.”

We're a lot of chemical ingredients got grandfathered in without testing. So we had all of these ingredients added in. And they kind of took the stance up. Oh, well, if someone complains and there's an issue,

then we'll look at a safety issues. So a lot of these ingredients that we've been using

for decades have never been safety tested.

And even if they are safety tested, we have no way of knowing the cumulative effect. I've not just that one product, but how are the ingredients and that one product interacting with all of the other ingredients

that you're putting on? So that's something that's pretty much impossible to study because we're all putting on different ingredients. And for years, they've been putting cancer, cancer, and ingredients, hormone disrupting,

like talking parabens, fowlates, fragrances, all of these ingredients which are known to mimic your hormones in your body. So if you're trying to balance your hormones, so you're slathering on all of these ingredients

that are mimicking hormones in your body, you know, you're kind of just pouring fuel on the fire. So it's really being aware of what you're putting on your body and learning to kind of be a detective. And there's so many great resources these days.

Aside from AI, you can literally go and ask it anything, but places like the EWG skin deep database where you can go in type of product and if they don't have your products, you can copy and paste the ingredients

and it'll give you a toxicity rating of one to town on how to toxic your products are,

“I think dirty, like there's so many apps you can use.”

- Okay, so here's my advice without no ingredients by name. If you pick up a product and the ingredient list is longer than a cheesecake factory menu, don't take it. - Don't take it. - Yeah, put it back.

- Oh shit, some of those are like a book. - It's insane.

- It's seriously 'cause I've always done that

with the protein powders where you pick some up and it's like then there's way too many ingredients in here. And then I see the ones with four or five and it's like okay now we're talking. - Yeah.

- I did a run through old to the other day and did that pick and out stuff. - It's terrifying. - Yeah, it is and I finally found one few body washers and stuff that like four or five ingredients.

You know, I want one more question from you 'cause Dr. Pompa especially in me got into this about anything that has a scent. - Yes. - Is it really bad to have anything scented?

'Cause I had to be careful with the lavender around my cat and freak me out 'cause I didn't realize. And I threw everything I had 'cause that's like my favorite scent. I just get rid of it all.

I don't care what I spent throw it away. - Yeah, it's the fragrance. This is kind of a scary. It's like when you go on the rabbit hole with ingredients and your personal care products,

it's hard to come back out of that rabbit hole because it's terrifying what they're allowed to put it in. And what's interesting about fragrance is it's a loophole for a lot of manufacturers where they can hide on disclosing ingredients

labeled as fragrance 'cause it's considered a trade secret. Like you don't have to disclose your trade secret. - Uh-huh. - So I think they did a study a few years ago and they took like the top 13 perfumes across the U.S.

like six, seven, eight, sometimes 12 ingredients

“in the perfume that wasn't listed on the ingredient list.”

- That's true. - And how do you know that those aren't cancer-causing hormone disrupting ingredients? - So fragrance is a very scary one. - We have so many things that we're gonna have

to get into on another one. Like I really wanna get into like cologne's perfumes, fragrances, toothpaste, like all of this stuff. - Yeah, it's a whole other world.

- Yeah, but like ingredients breakdowns and stuff 'cause I think that there's a lot, a lot,

a lot of things that people would never have a clue about.

- Never, absolutely not. - And then when you get this ideal path, we can't figure out what's wrong with you. It's sitting on your counter. It's in your drawer, your medicine cabinet.

- But all of your cleaners. - Yeah. - Like your cleaning products. Like this is a whole other podcast. What you store your food in the water bottles,

like when you go down that rabbit hole, it's pretty scary.

“- You have to start cutting them one by one by one.”

- It's not an overnight thing because you'll drive yourself crazy. - Yeah.

- And your kitchen and house a PMT.

- You'll have nothing left. - Me and Queenie did that. I said, you know what, let's go through the thing here and let's take every powder and supplement. - Yeah. - Everything we have and everything

with red dye or sucreless or anything. Let's look at it and take count. And I was like, come on man. - Everything, it is out of hand with the ingredients that they're allowed.

And especially in what's crazy's children's products, like they were sleeping in the house. - That's what tells us me off the mo. - Like you still find talc in parabens in children's products and it's even worse for children

'cause their bodies are so much smaller that it's infuriating that companies are okay with that. - When I'm on the fence about should I cover a topic or not and then I see it relates to children. Like I'm in.

- And I'm in, just forget it. - Because they're innocent. - They're innocent. - In isn't being. - Anything that hurts an animal or a child again.

- No, in auto in. - Yeah, it's sickening. - It's sickening what what manufacturers will do. - We're gonna talk about that after. So yeah, I mean, time flew.

And I feel like we didn't cover a fraction but at the same hand it was like super enlightening and super detailed and I'm glad that we got to showcase multi-fascists of what you do.

“That's what I enjoy about this when I get guests in here.”

You never do the same thing you did anymore else.

- No, never. - No. - I want people to see more about you which I feel like they certainly did. And so I feel like that's when I do my job.

And then you get to shine. And I hope that people really felt you shine 'cause I did and I think that everything you said resonated extremely well. So I appreciate it.

- Oh, thank you very much. - Tell everybody where they can find you and anything that you may offer anything to help people with what they have going on here. - Well, they can always find more at Instagram

that's where I hang out most at Kaster Wellness across the board, social media, at Kaster Wellness, our podcasts keep it clear. They want to come and get help with us. They can work with us inside the ClearScan solution.

They can find us at Kaster Wellness.com. - Sweet, go check her out because the information I knew was gonna be good but I didn't realize it was gonna be this damn good. So check her out.

Please, descriptions, check that out. You'll be able to follow Katie. Thank you again, Katie for coming but also your work. Because it's amazing. - Thank you, I appreciate it and thank you for your work.

- Thank you, I appreciate that. That being said, everyone, stay tuned for putting more to come. Dylan, Jimelli and Katie Stewart, sign it off.