Rachel Scheer: Get to the Root Cause of Acne, Psoriasis, and Rosacea

Today, in the Scheer Madness Podcast, Rachel shares some personal stories about what she’s been dealing with, mentally and physically in the past couple months, with stress playing a major part in some gut and skin issues.  She explains that diet and exercise isn’t always the solution for these kinds of problems – we need to get to the root cause, which isn’t going to be given to you by your average doctor.  Rachel discusses some routes she is currently taking to improve/redirect her mental and physical state and has specific guides to help anyone else going through similar situations.

For more information about working with our team at Rachel Scheer Nutrition, book a free 30-minute call at www.rachelscheer.com/application and learn more about functional wellness coaching at https://rachelscheer.com/functional-wellness-coaching/

Listen ON:
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scheer-madness/id1490423541
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5OLd9BtesW7Oe4nSH0QF9W

Chapters :

• 00:00 Intro
• 05:16 Gut Issues
• 08:00 DHT + Labs
• 13:21 Stress
• 17:32 Other Root Causes of Acne
• 23:24 Consolidating This Info

Connect with Rachel:
Website | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube

 

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Rachel Scheer: When we’re experiencing things like acne, rosacea, psoriasis, or any other type of skin symptom, it’s really an indicator of something that is off internal. Everyone, welcome back to the show. Today we’re going to be diving into the root cause approach or the functional medicine approach for skin issues like acne, psoriasis, rosacea. And I’m diving into this topic here today, because a few months ago, I started to develop some acne, or at least what I thought was acne. And this really took a massive toll in my confidence is much as I like to say, it’s not about the skin, it’s not about how we look like let’s be real. As women, we care about our skin, we care about our complexion, we want to feel beautiful, we want to feel competent. And there’s nothing wrong with that. And it does take a toll when we start to develop acne or skin issues when our weights not where we want it to be like it massively does. And we shouldn’t have to hide or pretend that it doesn’t bother us. So, back to my story, I started to actually develop some acne about a few months ago, and I haven’t had acne since I was probably 15 years old. And I had pretty bad acne when I was 14 1516. Actually, to the point, I was put on Accutane, which is like the worst, worst drug you can ever get on side effects is ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, people want to commit suicide, you know, those are the extreme things that they talk about. But no, you’ll probably just get them minor side effects like the chapped lips or some of the dry skin. And knowing nothing really about functional medicine at that time of my life and trusting the physicians who were in my life, I got an Accutane twice, and it cleared up my acne. And I still wonder to this day, if being on Accutane, played a big role in a lot of my gut issues that needless to say, I know what it’s like to have bad bad cystic acne, to the point where it massively impacts your competence. And I thought I had gotten through all of that. And especially as I’ve gotten into functional medicine and gut health, you know, my skin has been incredibly clear, I haven’t really had it sent me into a pimple here and there, you know, for the longest time, and I started to develop this, like acne covering my forehead. And it started off as just like a couple of bugs. And I’m like, okay, whatever, this may be hormonal, it’s gonna go away. But it continued to get worse and worse and worse, to the point where it literally started to cover my entire forehead. It was very inflamed. And I even started to develop it or on my jawline and on my chin. And given the work that I do with functional medicine, I thought, Okay, what would I do, if I was one of my clients coming to see me who is like there is something off in the body. One, we want to heal the gut. And two, we would want to get some functional medicine lab testing done to see what is off internally in the body. And when we’re experiencing things like acne, rosacea, psoriasis, or any other type of skin symptom, it’s really an indicator of something that is off internally. So even if you go to a dermatologist, and they give you a diagnosis of okay, you have acne valguero. So you have rosacea, you have psoriasis oftentime the solution is just giving you an antibiotic, which we know is terrible for your gut health, putting you on another type of medication if it’s an autoimmune condition, like psoriasis, and then giving you a bunch of topicals. So you’re addressing this from the outside, and then giving you a medication that wreaks havoc on your gut. I don’t know about you guys, but that is not the approach that I want. I really want to get to the root cause and heal. So what I did is I got some lab testing done. And I had a feeling that there was something off with two things First, my gut because your gut is connected to everything and to my hormones. When you have acne that’s normally around the jawline and your chin. That’s a big sign of hormonal acne. With all of this getting done, I also made sure that I was following an anti inflammatory diet. I upped my omega three fatty acid intake. So that was it. I think some more fish oils. And I felt like I was doing a lot of things, right. And I didn’t even have gut issues either like I haven’t had any bloating or any kind of constipation or anything like that, since I dealt with my own gut issues back in 2016. But you can still have gut issues without actually having gut issues. And what I mean by that is your gut can still become off, whether that’s from stress, or diet, or environmental toxins, that can still impact the rest of your body. And what’s so fascinating is, our gut is connected to our skin. So if the bacteria in our gut is what I call this biotic or imbalanced, that is going to impact our skin. And very likely a lot of our other systems too. I actually had a client very recently, who has been dealing with gut issues for probably the past decade of her life. She was struggling with sleep issues and insomnia, inability to lose weight, and I healed her gut and guess what happened, she started to sleep better. So don’t doubt the power of the gut. So I just changed my diet for a little while while I was waiting for the lab test to come back. And my good friend, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, who is a functional physician actually sent her a photo of my acne. And she sent me back a diagnosis. She said, Rachel, that’s not acne, that’s rosacea, and they look very similar. rosacea has a little bit more redness, it’s a little bit more inflamed. But there can be postural there with it, versus acne is a little bit different. But as soon as she gave me the diagnosis of rosacea, I thought, gut, this is gut. And actually 90% of rosacea cases come from a bacteria and bogs in the gut. So that exact same day that she said that she thought it was rosacea, I decided to put myself on an herbal antimicrobial protocol. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s more like a natural antibiotic protocol to eradicate any kind of bacterial overgrowth in the gut. So I put myself on an antimicrobial protocol to address my gut, I made sure I was following an anti inflammatory diet, I have my omega three fatty acids. And in addition to all of this, I also started to support my liver because your gut is a form of detoxification. But if you have excess toxin buildup in the body, which we all have toxins, because we live in a toxic world, and this can be plastics, BPA glyphosate, which is in a lot of food as a fertilizer for crops, this can be coming from our makeup, but we can get these toxins that build up in our body, that can lead to something called oxidative stress. This oxidative stress can also trigger inflammation in the body, impacting a lot of these systems. So the two things supporting my gut by changing my diet, and by doing an antimicrobial protocol, and then supporting liver detoxification with a few different types of supplements. I love Quicksilver Scientific, and we work with them with my practice quite a bit. They make light zones. LiPo zones are simply a delivery method, where you absorb them immediate into the body. So they’re actually more sublingual. They go below the tongue, and it’s the delivery method. And it works great for things like glutathione, which is your body’s major, major antioxidants, and that helps with supporting liver detoxification, help support skin. So I put myself on liver detoxification, with some B vitamins, milk thistle, glutathione, in the liposomal form. And in the meantime, I’m waiting for my labs to come back. And I had this feeling I had this feeling that my DHT levels are going to be high. For those of you who don’t know what DHT is, this is an androgen, it’s a male sex hormone that is derived specifically from testosterone. And previously, I have had higher levels of DHT. If I were to run what’s called a Dutch test on me, when I look at how my hormones naturally are metabolized, through my liver, I would see that my body is more preferential towards converting to stasis thrown into dihydroxy testosterone through a pathway called Five alpha reductase. Now this is genetic. It is genetic, in which if your

[00:09:58] Rachel Scheer: body prefers a pathway You have called Five alpha reductase. Or your body prefers a pathway called Five beta reductase. Now, if you’re a five Alpha person, you convert more testosterone into dihydroxy. Testosterone DHT has been shown to cause symptoms of hair loss, acne. So for a lot of men, when they actually get on testosterone, and they notice they start to get hair loss or they get acne, that’s because their testosterone is being converted into dihydroxy testosterone. So I had a feeling that for whatever reason, my DHT levels were going to be high. Took a few weeks to get this back. Well, I’m supporting my gut doing everything that I was already doing. And I got my labs back. And guess what? I am good at what I do, because that was exactly what was off. But not only was my DHT levels, almost double what they should be, I had elevated DHEA s which is also an androgen produced from your adrenal glands, and then had elevated testosterone and then of course, elevated DHT. Because DHT is a derivative of testosterone. Now, the question with functional medicine is always why? Why is this off? Why is my DHT high? Well, I know genetically a preferential towards that five Alpha pathway. But why is my testosterone and my DHEA high. And DHEA is actually the precursor to testosterone. So it makes sense, a DHEA is high, testosterone is going to be high, and possibly in DHT will be high if you’re a five Alpha person. Now, DHEA is produced by your adrenal glands. Your adrenal glands are really what manage your body’s stress response. your adrenals are connected to your body’s hypothalamus, pituitary, and then connected to your dream of 95% of your body’s serotonin is produced by the bacteria that resides in your gut. And this explains why when my gut was a wreck, or when clients come to work with me at Rachael shear nutrition, they don’t just suffer from things like bloating, constipation, diarrhea, but they also have symptoms of anxiety, depression, and brain fog, because our gut and our brain are highly interconnected. And as Hippocrates says, all disease begins and ends in the gut. And this is the exact reason why I am so passionate about taking a functional root cause based approach for any chronic health condition, gut issues, mental health, illness, autoimmune conditions, stubborn weight loss, you name it, me and my team do a comprehensive analysis, looking at all these different systems, so we can test instead of just guess, and then develop a customized nutrition plan and protocol to address these root causes and balances in the body and restore function. If you want to book a free 30 minute call with anyone from my team, click the link in the show notes or visit Rachel shear.com. So when you experience stress, whether this is physical stress, emotional stress, dietary stress, where you have inflammation in the brain, or you’re going through a tough period in life, where you have work, stress, your adrenals, output, DHEA and cortisol, your other stress hormone. And if you guys have been following my content, and my emails that I send out each week, you probably have noticed that I’ve been going through quite a bit of stress in my life right now. And it’s just crazy to think that between stress, and everything that was happening in my life, it could have impacted my gut. It could have impacted my hormones through my adrenals leading to acne. And I also haven’t been sleeping very well, the power that stress can play. And I think we don’t take that seriously. Often, we think it’s about nutrition, which is important, trust me. We want to address that or we think it’s just about taking certain supplements, but stress can really really impact our health. And really the only reason I could think that my adrenals would be outputting. So much DHEA was because of how much stress that I was under. So being on the Gup protocol, the liver detox and seeing these results, I also decided that I needed to make some serious lifestyle changes and this is why lifestyle changes are important in the whole functional medicine coaching that we made. Do and I started to really prioritize my evening routine so I get better sleep, I started to do an adrenal protocol, which there are certain supplements that can help support your adrenals. It still doesn’t make up for the stress that’s happening in your life. That’s the root cause. But I put myself on 1000 milligrams of vitamin C three times per day, your adrenals love vitamin C, along with an adrenal adaptogen, like ashwagandha, which helps keep my adrenals from not outputting so much DHEA and cortisol, it kind of brings it back to like this nice homeostasis. So between those four things, supporting my gut, doing an antimicrobial protocol, supporting my liver, detoxification with glutathione, B vitamins, methylation support milk thistle, then moving into making some dietary changes, upping my omega three fatty acids following a pretty strict anti inflammatory diet, and then doing an adrenal protocol while I was making some of these lifestyle changes, the results are incredible. And you guys know more acne or rosacea, I should say, gone, within one month of actually diagnosing what the root cause was. Now I had struggled with it for a few months. But once I actually figured out the root cause one month, all the bugs are gone, except for maybe this one that’s kind of by the side of my mouth that’s bothering me right now, I don’t even know where it’s at, for who’s watching a video right here. Now, everyone knows where my one complaint is right now. So that is the power of functional medicine and getting to the root cause you would not get that going to your primary care doctor, you would not get that going to your dermatologist, you would not get that going to your gastroenterologist, you would not get this in depth look at what is really happening in the body and how this is impacting the other systems in your body. How the gut is influencing your hormones, how your liver plays a role in all that. What you need to do with your nutrition and the supplements you need to take how your adrenals and your stress based off of what’s going on in your life is impacting all of these other systems. That is what the approaches that mean my team do that is gangster is the only way to really put it. Or I should say as my boyfriend Aaron would say he says gangsta that would be kinky stuff. And that’s why I love functional medicine. So let’s talk a little bit about other root causes of acne because other people may be different, you may not have the exact same root cause as I did. Or maybe you don’t even have acne, maybe we you do have rosacea, which Rosacea is a gut issue. Or maybe you have psoriasis, which is an autoimmune condition, we want to look at all of these different areas, there are four things that can be off in your body that can be impacting your hormones, your adrenals, your liver, or your gut. The first is inflammation. Inflammation can come about from stress, but it can also come about from the foods we eat, or even deficiencies. So deficiencies in your omega three fatty acids, or excesses in your omega six fatty acids like organic acid, which come from things like seed oils, vegetable oils, canola oil when you’re eating out quite a bit. So you can have an imbalance in your Omega three omega sixes. This is something we test for with my practice. You can just have inflammation in the body, something we also test for with my practice. And then of course, we want to make sure we’re reducing inflammation through stress, lifestyle changes, as well as your nutrition as well. So inflammation can play a big role. And this can actually show up in your gut. Your gut is a big source of inflammation. Number two is catabolic physiology, what the heck is that. So when we are catabolic, we have high levels of cortisol, our body stress hormone, which puts our body in a break down state, we can actually get our gut lining to begin to break down and leading to leaky gut, aka gut issues, food sensitivities,

[00:19:23] Rachel Scheer: but this can also cause your adrenals to output a lot of cortisol DHEA we know that DHEA can lead to higher levels of androgens, male sex hormones, impacting your overall hormones, your skin and your mood, your sleep to go along with it. catabolic physiology between your body’s stress response can also impact all of these systems. And then we have insulin resistance or just high levels of insulin. So insulin is a hormone that is produced by your body in response to eating too many carbohydrates or sugar If and when insulin is high, this is now an anabolic hormone that not only drives fat stores, but actually can lead to an increase in the sebaceous glands of more oil in your skin leading to acne. So blood sugar, completely massive role or your insulin. And then the last one is oxidative stress. You heard me mentioned this a bit earlier. And oxidative stress can come from having a buildup of toxins in our body. Something we also test for Rachel is your nutrition, or poor liver detoxification, you can have a genetic defect called MTHFR, where you’re not methylating very well, which you do through the liver can actually cause more toxins to get reabsorbed back in your body. Even hormones like estrogen to be reabsorbed back into your body, leading to hormone imbalances, like estrogen dominance, or just leading to poor detoxification overall, which can also impact your skin. So those are really the four big Whammies of what can be off in your body inflammation, oxidative stress, catabolic physiology, insulin resistance, and this manifests in gut microbiome imbalances. So an imbalance of bacteria in your gut called dysbiosis. And we have our gut skin connection. And interesting people who have psoriasis, which is an autoimmune condition is primarily caused from toxin buildup, genetic predisposition, especially the methylation as that MTHFR defect, or intestinal permeability, because when we have intestinal permeability or leaky gut, we get bacteria, foods and toxins that leaking into the bloodstream, triggering an immune and inflammatory response. And eventually, this immune response can lead to an auto immune condition. So now the immune system is attacking itself or attacking our body. And for some people, that’s how she modos. For some people, this is psoriasis, that skin issue. So working on the immune system and healing the gut and getting toxins out of the body plays a massive role in psoriasis or an autoimmune condition. By just intestinal permeability, inflammation in the gut, bacteria imbalances can play a massive role in your skin to hormones, we talked a bit about high levels of androgens, testosterone, DHEA, DHT. But this can also be an imbalance between your estrogen and your progesterone ratio, ladies. So this is why getting your hormones tested for not just if you’re making them or you’re not ranges are important, like most physicians test for, but testing for those optimal ranges is going to be so crucial. And then the last part is looking at your body’s stress response to your adrenals. Seeing how much cortisol your body is producing, we actually do a full 24 hour adrenal test on all of our clients to see how stress is playing a role. And if your adrenals are in overdrive, or sometimes even under a drive where you’re not producing enough, we call that burnout. So we don’t want it to be high, we don’t want it to be low, but we can actually test for all of that as well. So I threw a lot of information at you guys here today. So I’m gonna consolidate all of this. And I hope based off of listening to this podcast, you guys just know that overall, there’s a lot of things that can be causing the body to become off, and how powerful functional medicine can truly be for getting to the root cause and healing your body. And what’s amazing about this is you’re not just healing your skin, you are healing everything else that is off that’s impacting your sleep, your mood, your anxiety levels, your body composition, it’s literally impacting all these systems instead of just getting a bandaid to manage the symptoms. So some things you guys can start doing right now. If you are somebody who’s struggling with any kind of skin issue, or you just want to improve your overall health is one phone, anti inflammatory diet, cut out anything that comes in a bag or a box or that’s processed food, one ingredients foods, so what does that mean? This means you’re eating lots of fruits and vegetables, ideally organic if possible, check out something called the Dirty Dozen and the Clean 15 If you want to get very specific of what fruits and vegetables you should always buy organic because of the herbicides and pesticides or which ones are fine to buy conventional because back to the toxin side. Anti Inflammatory diet, lots of fruits, vegetables, good fats, avocado, coconut oil, olives, olive oil, fatty cuts of fish high quality Animal protein that’s grass fed and finished wild caught pasture raised. This is what your diet should look like not Ultra processed tons of sugar, everything that’s quick and easy and convenient besides just like grabbing a piece of fruit or some good, healthy raw nuts, probably not good for you. So anti inflammatory diet with a low glycemic diet, which you will probably end up doing just by going on a whole foods diet, like I just mentioned here, which will help control your blood sugar. But something else you can do to control blood sugar is having a protein and animal protein with a source of fat like avocado, coconut oil, olive oil, olive oil, with some kind of a fiber with each meal. So fiber could be coming from some non starchy vegetables, let’s say it’s like a salad, maybe something like sweet potato that will really help keep your blood sugar regulated. Three, kill your gut. You guys know this, heal the gut, because your gut is connected to everything. Number four, support your liver. I love glutathione for supporting liver detoxification. But it does need to be a liposomal or as an IV or an IV push, because typical oral glutathione isn’t absorbed very well throughout the body. So you can take that as an antioxidant. Vitamin C is also another great antioxidant. And then five, reduce stress support your adrenals. So lifestyle matters. Stress matters, as you guys have heard from my story here today about how stress was really impacting everything in my body and led so many things to be off. Sometimes it’s not that you’re, you’re eating bad. It’s not that you got some kind of an infection or you got sick, it’s that you’re not really dealing with the stuff going on in here. And trust me, I’ve been in that boat before that is sometimes the hardest area to really work on. But when you see the labs, if you literally see it in front of you, you’re gonna want to make the shift and the change because you owe it to yourself. You owe it to yourself to be the best version of us so you can feel good every single day. So I hope you guys got a lot out of today’s podcast. And if you’re thinking, hey, I want to work with Rachel’s team, I want to do all these lab tests, I want to take a functional medicine approach, we actually offer a free 30 minute call, where we do a deep dive into what your symptoms are, what your goals are and see how this approach would work for you. So if you want to learn more about that you can actually head over to Rachel shear.com and book your free call there. Hope you guys enjoyed today’s episode. Do me a favor tag me on social media Instagram. If you guys enjoyed this episode, leave me a review. I love seeing your reviews and this podcast is free. I don’t charge for it is free information and this was just an awesome JAM PACKED episode of a ton of information. So if you haven’t yet, please go leave me a review. Share this with a friend. I appreciate you guys so much and this has been sheer madness