How to Heal the Skin
This article can help with anything from eczema, psoriasis, chronic hives, rashes, itching, dryness, acne, or any other problem with the skin, because in reality, there are the SAME UNDERLYING ROOT CAUSES.
There are THREE TOP THINGS we need to focus on when healing the skin. These are:
- Microbiome
- Detox
- Light Exposure
Let’s take these one by one.
The Microbiome
The skin has a microbiome! We always think about our digestive tract when it comes to the microbiome, but our skin has a major microbiome as well that is often just as neglected, if not more! Microbes send out chemical signals that communicate with each other. This means the health of the microbiome on your skin will cause certain chemical messages to be sent around your body, which will effect the health of your gut, and vice versa: if your gut is very imbalanced, it will send signals to your skin and cause negative symptoms there. The gut-skin connection cannot be overlooked, and that means we must nourish both your skin and your gut microbiome.
The key steps are to make sure you are on a Gut Rebuilding Diet. This means that we restrict the intake of complex carbohydrates as in the Specific Carbohydrate Diet parameters, which we find to be the most effective nutritional protocols of gut rebuilding. We also need to prioritize foods in our diet that provide our skin the raw material to heal, and this would be saturated fats and collagen from animal foods. Unfortunately, we can’t rely on plant fats as these are not the correct ratios of fatty acids for the skin to heal, and we can’t depend on collagen powders for our collagen intake. We need the full spectrum of collagen types, which is only found in animal bones with the skin and joints in tact (meat stock/bone broth from bone in cuts of meat, skin on chicken, shrimp, eggs, etc.).
Our meal plans all fall into these parameters. These protocols will all improve the health of your skin microbiome, and can be found at:
Additionally, we want to REPLENISH the microbiome on our skin by auditing all of our hygiene products. These complex skin care routines are actually the WORST things you can do for your skin. Most are plant based at best, and full of toxic, anti bacterial, hormone disrupting chemicals at worse! Plant fats do not supply the correct ratios of fats for our skins, so tallow or lard based skin care is best. Egg yolks can also be a helpful therapeutic treatment. You can also use kefir or yogurt on your skin (I know, it sounds weird!). It absorbs very quickly and provides your skin a nice replenishment of probiotics!
Bonus: put a filter on your shower! The chlorine in water can damage the microbiome on your skin.
Detoxification
Most of the time, if I would ask you for an organ that helps you detox, you would probably say liver, kidneys, or maybe even colon. We forget that the skin is actually a major detox organ! This was especially pertinent for me in my journey, as I had a LOT of skin symptoms that were totally correlated with how overloaded my liver was and how much constipation I was struggling with. When my detox pathways were “backed up”, my body would try to push toxins out through my skin, causing very painful symptoms. The solution is to make sure we are fully supporting our detox pathways.
The best ways to support the liver, kidneys and colon (so your skin doesn’t have to take on the burden!) includes detox baths with epsom salts and bentonite clay, coffee enemas, and castor oil packs. We have some links to helpful products here:
Light Exposure
Our skin is a major sensory organ, and it is covered in specialized receptors that respond to light! We actually need a certain amount of Vit D for healthy skin, as well as exposure to infra red light, both of which come from the sun. Unfortunately today, many people are damaging their skin and blocking exposure to these sun based benefits by slathering themselves in sunscreen every day.
If you are not used to get sun exposure, or you have histamine issues that cause worsening symptoms in the sun, you need to start very slow, as little as 5-10 minutes per day. Over time, you will build what is called a “solar callous”, and you will be able to tolerate more and more sunlight exposure. The minimum we should get on our skin per day is 20 minutes, but several hours is more optimal when your tolerance has increased.
If you live in a place where it is very cold and hard to get sun exposure on your skin, you can use a therapeutic red light device, although this will not provide Vit D, and it generally must be supplemented.
