The Dylan Gemelli Podcast - Episode #160: Your ACNE Could Actually Be A GUT Problem! Featuring Katie Stewart

Episode Date: September 5, 2026

Episode #160 Featuring Katie Stewart What if your acne isn’t actually a SKIN PROBLEM? Registered Holistic Nutritionist and Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner, Katie Stewart, reveals why chronic breakouts can be a sign of deeper issues involving your gut, hormones, liver, nervous system and nutrition and why simply treating the skin may never address what’s actually causing your acne. Katie has spent the last decade helping more than 3,000 clients across 15+ countries address chronic adult acne through root-cause nutrition and functional lab testing. She is the founder of The Clear Skin Solution and co-host of the Keep It Clear Podcast.   In this episode, she explains: ◾ Why acne can be an external symptom of an internal health problem ◾ How birth control can affect your hormones, gut health, nutrients and acne ◾ Why gut dysfunction, constipation and low stomach acid may show up through your skin ◾ How chronic stress and a dysregulated nervous system can make acne harder to resolve ◾ The truth about Accutane, antibiotics and conventional acne treatments ◾ How protein, healthy fats, carbohydrates, caffeine and alcohol can affect your skin ◾ Which skincare products are actually worth spending money on ◾ Why fragrances and certain ingredients in personal care products may interfere with your hormones Chapters: (00:00) Birth Control, Hormones & Acne (00:38) Just Thrive (02:03) Meet Katie Stewart (05:49) What Birth Control Actually Does to Your Body (10:22) Acne Is More Than a Skin Problem (11:34) The Gut-Skin Connection (13:24) Low Stomach Acid & Digestive Dysfunction (14:13) Why Your Nervous System Matters for Your Skin (18:37) Finding the Root Cause of Acne (20:51) Functional Testing for Acne (22:24) Ranking the Biggest Drivers of Healthy Skin (25:05) Is Sun Exposure Actually Bad for You? (27:37) Foods, Oils & Nutrients for Better Skin (29:02) Healthy Fats & Hormones (30:28) Why Women May Need More Protein? (31:27) Are Carbs Bad for Your Skin? (34:21) Coffee, Caffeine & Acne (38:42) The Truth About Accutane (44:03) Adult Acne, Menopause & Hormones (46:36) Constipation, Fiber & Your Skin (48:37) Alcohol’s Effect on Your Skin & Health (52:24) Skincare: What’s Actually Worth Your Money? (54:09) How Often Should You Wash Your Face? (55:28) Moisturizers & Oily Skin (55:59) Toxic Ingredients in Personal Care Products (59:23) The Problem With Fragrance (1:02:08) Final Thoughts Follow Katie Stewart: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katiestewartwellness/ The Clear Skin Solution: https://katiestewartwellness.com/ Keep It Clear Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/hr/podcast/keep-it-clear/id1691406928 https://open.spotify.com/show/0hDOLQoELzBz4tTXnQJP7M?si=7cc8d75846844666 https://www.youtube.com/katiestewartwellness —-------------------------------------------------------------------------- TODAYS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY JUST THRIVE Probiotics Use my link below and receive 90 DAYS OF FREE Digestive Bitters when you sign up for 90 days of the Probiotic!!! https://justthrivehealth.com/DYLAN ALSO Take 20% off at Just Thrive SITE WIDE with my link below https://justthrivehealth.com/DYLANGEMELLI —-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Timeline MITOPURE: The #1 Doctor Recommended Urolithin A Supplement!   Get your FREE Mitopure Gummies Here: https://timeline.com/gemelli     To PURCHASE MITOPURE visit Dylan's landing page and use code DYLAN to save 20% OFF!! https://shop.timeline.com/DYLAN —-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Get the Apollo Neuro for $99 OFF!! Use Code GEMELLI! https://apolloneuro.com/gemelli —-------------------------------------------------------------------------- TRULY Increase Your NAD LEVELS with WONDERFEEL NMN: https://getwonderfeel.com/?utm_source=DylanGemelli&utm_medium=podcast —-------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Dylan Gemelli Podcast: ■ Follow Dylan on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/dylangemelli/ ■ Visit Dylan’s website - https://dylangemelli.com/ ■ Dylan Gemelli Health and Wellness - https://www.youtube.com/channel/ UCdFBUS_MMN25QRkJsUz8QvQ ■ Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/3In4QlJj4IvHqq0eduKj7m ■Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/hr/podcast/the-dylan-gemelli-podcast/ id1780873400

So many of us was given the birth control pill at 12, 13, 14, whether you had acne, painful 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 because your body is sending you a message, that there's something going on. And I can understand that we want to 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 going to be happening to your body?

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with your first 90-day probiotic subscription today. All right, everybody. Welcome back to the Dylan Jameli podcast. So thankfully, my guest is a 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 because she can't wait to listen to you. And I am known for being a skincare 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 going to 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, Dillel. I'm so excited to be here. It's something I love doing. It's podcast, guesting, having people on my podcasts.

So anytime I get to come and do them, and especially in person, they're 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. Yeah, I'm sure we could have like a multi-part series on that. Right. So I should temper what I say here. But there is a lot of stuff that I want to get into like,

with the sun with skin care products what's in them the whole nine 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 some skin things that you've dealt with which obviously were drivers into 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 you know 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. It was 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.

and 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 all of these delicious foods? And I thought, you want to let, let's give this crazy lady a chance.

I took it out my lifelong mongraines when I weigh, some makes that I had. And the acne issues I had been having since coming off the birth control pill in my early 20s started to get better. Didn't completely clear, but I was noticing a shift. And working in television,

we obviously 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 jaw line and being 20, 21 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 to study 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 because there's, 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 for millennial women because so many of us was given the birth control pill at 12, 13, 14, whether you had acne, painful 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 because all my friends did. And the doctor was like, yeah, 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 impacts your body. And all of these light bulbs went off. It was like a cartoon with like the light. light bulbs over my house, like, oh my God, like I, I had no idea that birth control could impact my body like this. And it was talking about the impacts it has in your gut 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 contributing to existing hormonal imbalances, but it can be creating new hormone 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 because it's been suppressed. Okay. This is a whole topic. 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, because so many of these women or 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 estrogens, especially if you're on, you know, not just a, on one of the combo pills, like where we're dealing with the synthetic estrogen's and it's actually suppressing your ovulation. It's cutting off the communication between your brain and your ovaries. And we have to remember like 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 bodybuilders that use 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. Because then your body's really screwed up because it never had a chance.

Yeah. And what I hear a lot from people, it's a 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 are like, what do you, 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. If I don't take it, this happens. And I tell them like, well, that's because your body is sending you a message, that there's something going on. And I can understand that we want to 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 going to 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, say that well you're playing your body set up and you you can say whatever you want and say that somebody is playing aside like i said or whatnot it's it's very very evident what happens and it and this is like i said it goes with steroid use it goes with glp ones it goes with anything that tricks your body to doing something that's not supposed to do absolutely that's what it's just people you know what it is is people have this mindset or one track mind you're telling them what to do or you're trying to

control them i always say do not your dad do whatever the hell you want Yeah. We're not going to 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 impacts your hormonal balance. It is going to be impacting your liver, going to be altering your gut's microbiome and depleting your body of key nutrients. Well, guess what four big drivers of acne are is going to be your gut, your detox, your hormones and nutrients. So 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 antibiotic, acutamist, sparrantone, 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 is so widely discussed and understood now like it never was. So I, I temper what I'm going to say here because 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 gut 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 because a lot of people have a misconception about gut health where, they'll say, oh, I've worked on my gut. And I said, okay, well, great, what would we be done? Like, oh, I take a probiotic. And I say, okay, well, that's one tool in the toolbox.

And do you even need that probiotic? 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, oh, I'm working on my gut, I drink can't butcher or whatever, is you have to be looking at, well, what's going on in your gut? And for our acne sufferers, there is almost always some type of digestive dysfunction. So whether they have low stomach acid where they don't have enough stomach acid to be breaking their food down.

So if that's happening, you can be eating 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 at 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 and yeast in your gut. When the bacteria and yeast overgrow, we're going to be dealing with more inflammation. it's going to be contributing to intestinal permeability or leaky gut. It is going to be leading to symptoms like bloat, 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. Because like, oh, I don't have any gut issues. I'm like, well, your skin is a gut issue. And then like I mentioned is we see a lot of yeast overgrowth. So candida, bacterial overgrowth like staff and strep we see quite often. and then we'll also be seeing leaky gut where their gut lining is just so inflamed that it is now, you know, allowing undigested food particles, toxins, bacteria, things into the bloodstream that shouldn't be there. And then causing bodywide 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 going to 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, about their mid 40s. So they're in that, you know, they have a career, they have a family, they have people that 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, you know, we've grown up just destroying our gut health where a lot of the millennials partied quite a bit growing up. So like have we just, yeah, like the millennials really need to repair their gut. health, let's just put it that way. So I always feel like for our clients, though, stress is a major driver for stomach acid issues. So nervous system plays a key role here. It's one of our core pillars and what's so interesting to Lynn 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 ashwagand and rodeo in the world and expect your nervous system to calm down. Yeah. You know, I spent so many years, folks, focused on the fitness, the nutrition, and those are very, very important. But I was missing the most important. The most important piece. Yeah, because even as spiritual as I am, because I say it starts with God,

but you have to get in the right state of mind because I would do my prayers, feel good, and then go right back to where I was because my nervous system was so out of whack. And there's things that you don't even realize, your thinking are 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 so play in your skin? It's probably the biggest role that it plays, because when you peel back

gut, 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 I have this one example of a client who I always think about. And she was our longest worked client that we had. She worked, we worked with her for three years.

And she would, her skin was looking great and then it plateaued. We like couldn't, 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 happened. And we just watched her acne, like physically recede off of her face all from allowing her nervous system to feel safe. See, and that's, I think some people, they, you go day by day

and you don't realize sometimes even the stresses you're going through until you sit down and evaluate. Yeah. And you're like, man, why am I getting so antsy or why can't I focus or why am I angry all the time or whatever, but you just kind of get in a pattern and used to it. Yeah. And it's hard to see. And I think that's the issue is so many people are like, oh, I'm not stressed. And we're like, what do you mean? You're not stressed.

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

That's why we often will get our clients to write out all the things they're responsible for. And they're like, oh, I didn't even. Yeah, no, my nervous system is 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. Amazing. Yes.

And he was talking about 99. percent of the people are stuck in fight or flight and you don't even know it i 100 percent 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 want to miss breath work sessions or any 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 up to let's let's fucking go. Yeah.

Yeah. So, but it's made me look younger is where I'm going with this. I feel younger. I look younger. I don't have as many like 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. 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 because 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's 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 they're using. I don't even know 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 asking me those kind of questions? I ask you so many questions. You're going to get annoyed with me. We have a very, my team and I have a very intensive intake list. Like there's questions on there.

Like, why are you asking me about? Like, we're asking about your 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 in traditional Chinese medicine face mapping. Okay. Which we've a little bit tweaked over the years because we've worked with so many clients. So we will be looking at locations of breakouts as well.

But we also run functional testing for any of our 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 with, I've never seen one client have the exact same root cause of somebody else. Sure, they might both have gut issues, but maybe client A is dealing with candida, low stomach acid, poor methylation. And client B is dealing with sluggish lymph and like too much DHEA.

Like there's so many different things that can be going on. So it really does need to be tailored to the individual. So this is why we're a big fan of functional testing. We use a hair trace metal analysis with every client because it gives us like an incredible overview of the whole body. Like I love a GI map of stool analysis, gut zumer, Dutch tests, all of those. but we can see so much in a hair test that we're we can even 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 this like the pathway to do it because so many acne suffers, they've been throwing spaghetti at the wall for years. And you don't have acne for the same reason another person has acne. So I've got a couple questions. I'm going to give you certain scenarios here. So like for instance, you come to me with low testosterone. and you're I want TRT and I say no we're going to 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 Katie 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 going to be complete. Um, too often are going to be comprehensive enough to be looking at like the drivers of acne because it's often like gut imbalances and like a blood test isn't going to be like, oh, you have step and step and straf or, um, oh, you have low

stomach acid or oh, you're, you know, you have a copper and 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, where you're going to 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? Eating 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 going to do something with you then. because I think you're ready for something like this. We're going to do one to five, five being most important, one being least important on the effect on your skin. These are just health things, right? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, let's start with the easy one, because we already talked about it, gut health.

Yeah, I'm going to say five. Cellular health. Can I keep saying five? You can say five all day long. I might have to 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. I know. Let's do ferretin and iron. For acne specifically, I'm going to say 2.5 to 3. Okay. Yeah. We're going to get, I'm going to, I got to get you. Yeah, you got to.

I can't give you the most basic. How about kidney function? Actually quite important. I would say like a four. A four. Yeah. What about like for a man like prostate health? Um, I, I'm going to have to put that around a four as well because like prostate

health it's for men that's yeah a huge part of their health so like we need to be looking at it's hard for the individual body systems i want to say five for all of them because your bodies it's an open concept workspace right in different silos what about like progesterone for women um that would be for acne specifically i'm going to say that's yeah like a four or five yeah okay that's what i was thinking like something like really strong hormonally when a progesterone estrogen testosterone i would imagine have a 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 going to 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 how how it's like your sleep is when your cortisol is coming back down so if you're burning the candle at both ends that's going to be impacting your cortisol your nervous system regulation and what's really interesting is I always say your today started yesterday at bedtime. Because 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 sugar is shot for the morning. And then you're rushing through your morning. Your blood sugar dips. So now you're going to binge eat on like something refined carbohydrate, that bag of chips, that slice of pizza, that whatever that is in the mid afternoon.

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 haven't eaten all day so you're starving, then you binge eat all night, and then you snack all evening until 11 p.m. and then you start the whole process over again.

So really like your sleep and circadian rhythm is super important. Yes, very. Here's one. This is polarizing. Ooh. Sun. This is polarizing. So I would say directly for acne,

like I would put it out of three, but I think for your health of five. Yeah. Like we need sun and so many of us are terrified of the sun. Wait a minute. Are you telling me it's okay? okay to go in the sun. Oh my gosh.

Is that what you're saying? I'm saying it's okay to the sun. Oh gosh. End of world. I think my DMs are going to explode with that one as an acne nutritionist. And that's one of those things that pisses me off to no end. Seriously. I could do a whole podcast on the importance of the sun.

I mean I always preface it when I say get sunlight. I don't mean stay out there four and five hours a day. No, no, no, no. But. But how important is it to get out there 20 minutes a day? That's how you're getting your vitamin D. Like if we're constantly covering up, putting all the SPF on, we're terrified of of the sun, the majority of us are putting on really toxic sunscreens anyway.

Right. Which we're now showing that, you know, certain ingredients in the sunscreens have been linked to be carcinogens where when they're exposed to the sunlight, they're seeing that they have two tumors in animal studies. And we're slaving 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 the, you know, this Arizona sun here and baking, but, you know, getting 15, 20 minutes of unprotected sun.

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 kill yourself and it's something 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. Yeah. 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, that's not how that works. 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 then about foods also. Oh, let me ask you a couple more that I just thought of trace, trace mineral rise, like selenium and iodine. How much of a factor do those play on skin? Well, they're super important. They're like, I don't want to say bi-factor, but they're so important for your adrenals, right? If we don't have the trace minerals, like trace minerals are great for your adrenals, they are great for cellular hydration. Yeah. Where if you're just drinking tons of water, but it's not getting into your cells, like we're not doing it any justice. So trace minerals can be fantastic.

I'm a massive advocate for getting plenty of those. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about some nutrients and things that are, what I would say you want to prioritize. Because, you know, when I was back in the, 90s and 2000s, it's like, oh, if you eat greasy, it's going to make your breakout. Potato chips are going to make you break.

Chocolate and grease, yeah. How true is that? Well, it's, no, especially chocolate. It's not the chocolate that's giving you breakouts. It's the ingredients in the chocolate. The dairy, the sugar, the conventional ingredients, the refined oils. And the same thing is the fried foods, it's those refined vegetable oils that is leading to inflammation in your body that's impacting your liver and impacting your hormones

and your gut health. So we need to just be eating smarter and eating like real whole. foods. What kind of oils would you avoid and which ones do you think are okay? I would definitely avoid the seed oils. Oh no. Shocking. I know. I think I do really well living in Arizona since I've been here. So many seed oil free. There's there's quite a few here. It's awesome. 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 is like a finishing oil, never heating a flax seed.

So all of those unrefined oils can be really, really helpful. Yeah. I like, well, I cook everything in grass fed butter now. Oh, yeah. What about, let's go down the line of importance with nutrients. 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, like just culture we grew up in was very like fear fats. Yeah.

But I was, I'm a nutritionist. I was coaching people to eat fats. But I was the exception. Yeah. And I, when I started to eat them, I went from like 15 grams a day to 130. and I see that and I go back and look and it's like I look 10 years younger now than I did at the time from starving myself. Absolutely.

And it's just the impact that it has on the glow. Yeah, I'll leave the mental clarity out. That's a whole other story. But the skin glow. It's because the hydration, right? Like the healthy fats are also helping produce or keep that hydration in your skin. 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 like, you know, I'm talking like regular lotion creams, not just face creams, just everything.

And it's just based around having good healthy fats within them and plumping the skin. So then what about proteins? Hugely important, especially for women are chronic under-eaters of protein. I rarely have to beg a man to eat more protein. But a woman, I am like, are you eating enough protein? Like, yeah, yeah, no, I am. I'm like, well, like, what are we talking here? And they're like, oh, I might eat like maybe like half a chicken breast at dinner.

I'm like, okay, so we're maybe getting 25 grams, like, if we're 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 from our 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 would lead us to the dreaded carbs. Yes, the dreaded carb question. Yeah.

So what kind of effect and break down complex, simple, what's the difference? What's good? What's bad? Are they all good? Are they all bad? Well, no, we need carbs, right? Like, Oh, be careful.

I am seeing some like really, really polarizing things today. We, we, we, our body needs carbohydrates. And again, growing up in that like 80s, 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. Yeah. But carbohydrates, we, 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 fat to be keeping our 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 teach people too. Go down the line. Have your protein, then your fat and your carbs. And that way you're going to stop the spikes. That's what I tell them.

Yes, and everything will run smoothly. And then go walk after you eat. Go walk. 10 minutes. That's it. I actually go ride my bike now after I eat. Amazing. And I just go like 25 minutes.

I do like this prayer time ride my bike. I come home and I don't feel heavy or anything. You know? I always saw clients go for a quick walk after an hour and 10 minutes. Even if it's too cold out. I live in Canada, I'd way too cold in the winter. Walk around the house a few times. But you don't have to 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, your 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 have 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 food. four or five hours. That's the thing is when you eat enough food in a day, it is like miracles happen. You know how many years I spent miserable hungry all day?

Yeah. And everything I did. And I 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 are gone five or six hours, one, meal and it's like man I'm good all day. 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? Ooh, I'm going to like out of scale of one to five, I'm going to put it as like a four. Okay. And let me explain though. Please. So with a lot of our acne suffers, their nervous systems are shot, their adrenales 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, which is going to be driving, sorry, we're impacting our cortisol or blood sugar. It's going to be increasing sebum production in the skin, which is a sticky, oily, oily substance that clogs pours and leads to more breakouts. Okay.

So it's not that you have to give up coffee forever, but let's say that we're, you know, we're really working on rebalancing the body. We have to repair all these body systems. Can we temporarily hold back on the coffee? Maybe even, like, trying it just in the morning. Because a lot of our clients are like, well, I don't sleep at night. I'm like, well, you're having two cups of coffee at 4 p.m.

Like, let's move that up a little bit to like before noon. And then if you do want to, you know, once we've done their therapeutic protocols and we want to add the caffeine back, the coffee back in, could we start with like a decafine, organic Swiss water decaffeinated? 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. Connoisseur. It's exactly what it is. And clients are like, oh my gosh, I never thought about it that way. You're right. I look forward to making it, having something warm to drink, drinking it throughout the morning. Or maybe you swap it for matcha. I'm a big matcha fan personally.

I have a cult of matcha followers. Really? I've created quite the cult, to be honest. It's getting out of hand. You've got to talk to Queen after because she's like Macha queen. We're going to be best friends. I already know it. Macha is because what has the althian in it, right?

The amino acid that's giving you the alert calm instead of the heart. hard and fight fast spike and crash of a coffee. So then if it gives you the alert calm, 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,

than a cup of black coffee. But if you're somebody that's struggling with their sleep, I would definitely recommend pulling back on the caffeine. I'm not a big tea guy. It's not that I don't, I'm just not a big tea guy, but match is great. I love a macho latte.

Yeah. Absolutely. And it makes you feel good. I feel physically. while 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 decaf. 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 like this gut repair thing that Dr. Vincent, Pedri makes. I don't know if you know, but he does. a lot of gut work and I just enjoy it. Yeah. You know what I mean? Look forward to it. Well, shit.

When I'm working during the day and I have that, I'm just like, oh, man, it calms 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 Folgers. I'm from Canada, so those are their friends. But maybe like a Dunkin' Donuts coffee, we could say here in the States. And like when you're getting probably an organic, mold-free, high-quality, like, it's a very different type of coffee.

People don't know or understand because they're used to drink. drinking gas station coffee or on the run or something. And you just don't know. I'll always spend the money on it just because it's so just amazing. I didn't start drinking coffee until 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, her K cup thing broke. And I bought her one. And I was like, I told Queenie, screw it. Let's just buy one. which is horrible, by the way, to drink out of.

So I progressed from that. And then I, when 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, it opens a whole new world. Yeah. I carry that with me when I travel.

Yeah, absolutely. Everywhere. You can't not know. No. Yeah. And it's, my skin also, once again, has looked fabulous. but I think that it's temperate upon everything else I'm doing. All right, skin care time.

Yes, big topic. First thing I want to ask you, but I brought it up earlier, is acutane. Yes. So explain, because to me, I'm just going to tell you what I know about it, which isn't a ton, 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, it's, so what's interesting about acutane is it's supposed to be prescribed for severe,

widespread scarring acne. Okay. It is prescribed for weight less. Really? I have seen clients come in and they're like, like their acne would not be considered severe widespread and 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 do it. often see some type of antibiotic. The record, get ready to have a panic attack, is the record for a 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? Like, well, the doctor never checked back in with me and it was just an unlimited prescription. We're like,

oh, okay, all right. Really? So you can imagine the gut issues we dealt with there. And that was, And we see this all the time, like years and years and years on very heavy dose antibiotics. Birth control will be another one, sclerone lactone, but acutane, I've had clients, and again, like some people take acutane have incredible results. Like that does happen. And in my experience with 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 month 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're going to get cracked bleeding lips, very dry skin. There's always a purging stage where their skin gets 10 times worse before it gets better. You can actually have lifelong 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. this might be wrong now, but if you were a pilot in the U.S. military and you were taking Accutane, you couldn't fly for a period of time while on it or afterwards because of the impacts it has on your eyesight. Really? Yeah, that was a stat from a while ago, so we'd have to look it up 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, well, at least in Canada, because of the ways that it can cause severe birth, the fact that if you're a woman on Accutane, you have to be taking birth control alongside it. Wow. So there's toxicity within it then 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 different things that. And it's like, man, are these really worth it?

I know. And you wonder what, did you ever deal with acne? No, not at all. Yeah. So what's really interesting is when you have acne, it almost like blinds you to any of side effects because it impacts you on such a deep level where 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 mentally 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. And like 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 health, long term health effects be damned. So I do understand that where they're coming from because they're just so desperate is a really good word for it. What kind of mental problems then can that bring? Because that's actually just going to exacerbate the problem, right? Because if you go, that's stressed, it's going to make it worse. That's a lot of clients are like, Katie, I don't, like, this is like a hamsterer with I can't get 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 the process. Yeah, because otherwise

you're rob and Peter to pay Paul and putting them on 75 different medicines. Exactly. Exactly. So you're taking one to calm down, then you're taking another for your acne, and then the one that's taking you to calm down could have a side effect to give you more acne. Exactly. It's yeah, it gets crazy out there. The acne world is very, very multifaceted and complex. Wow. Okay. So that sucks. That it does. Yep. What's the most common age or? age bracket where people start to have problems. And also, what about women in menopause? Do they tend to have that problem because of the hormone fluctuation?

What's interesting is we have clients. There's two groups of clients we have. The clients have had it their whole life. Katie, I've had this since I was eight years old. I'm 38 now. I've been having, I haven'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 40s going to paramedopause. And what's interesting, those clients, like, it literally always say it just came out of nowhere. I don't know what happened. It just came out of nowhere.

And then we start to pull it back. And I like to explain it to them that your health is a bucket. And over the years, we're slowly filling that bucket up with, you know, trauma, food poisoning. You got a parasite. You took these medications. You had this stressor happen. And all of a sudden, it's like we get to that last pore of the bucket and things start spilling over. Yeah.

So what may seem like, you know, not a big thing to you, it was the last straw off of 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 do acne after they've had kids or a lot of clients are getting it coming off of the birth control. Yeah. Because they've been on it for 10, 20, some clients, 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? Because I've seen that too where people have them just at that time. Yes. So we do have clients that have more cyclical breakouts. Yeah. So maybe they have it in the week leading up to their period. And that's where we want to be 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 like kind of testosterone surge. So maybe it's that that androgen component that we want to be looking at. And we really do look at those cyclical patterns. But a lot of the times when 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? Your gut and your detoxification system.

And what's interesting is for 90% of our clients, we don't even touch their sex hormones. When you give the body what it needs, it can self-regulate your hormones. So for our clients dealing with hormonal acne, we rebalance their gut microbiome. And we had that unique subset of microbes in the gut of the esterbolom, which is going to metabolize estrogen. So if your 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 well, are filtering your hormones, the hormones are able to self-regulate.

A lot of people don't get a lot of fiber in their diet. A lot of people are lacking. Does that have any kind of effect? Huge. Yeah. You know, 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, 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 the bowel movements have anything to do with your health and your skin and da-da-da-da. I'm like, well, look at now, everybody. Look, doctors 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'd think that'd be kind of obvious. Kind of obvious. I don't see how there's any kickback on that. You're full of waste and garbage. Yes. Stupid, man. It's crazy. And to think that that wouldn't have an impact, it's like if your stool sitting too long

in your digestive tract. the toxins and bacteria and hormones it's supposed to be getting rid of is going to absorb back from the body recirculate. Now we have higher levels of inflammation, toxicity and hormone on balance because 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 try to be very temperate on my insults or my thoughts.

Thoughts. But I'll tell you this. When something's so damn obvious like, for instance, I'm just going to say it because I think at this point we know, going to 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'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 start doing candida protocols and gut and detoxifications if you're not pooping every day exactly It's not going anywhere. So bowel movements is actually the very first thing we look at alongside cortisol blood sugar. Okay. What about people that drink alcohol on a kind of a normal basis? Wouldn't that have some sort of an effect? 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. Oh, dude. Yeah. I feel like our generation, aren't we the drunken 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 still repairing damage from my 20s.

It took me a long time to get mine right. Yeah. So I get it, like, you know, being in that partying phase, but you have to understand that. Like, alcohol is a poison to the body. And, you know, a lot of people are like, oh, well, like, it helps me sleep. I'm like, helps you fall asleep. It doesn't help you sleep well. Well, you aren't getting into REM.

No. So zero amount of alcohol is the best amount. And luckily, it's what's interesting is all my 30s clients in about 30s, 40s, 50s, they're like, no, I need my glasses of wine. Like, how am I going to 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 are like, oh, no, I don't drink alcohol. I love that. Stay that way forever. It's great. And I used to, and I say this, if you want to fall asleep fast, alcohol may be the best thing. And if you want to 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, you're all of the things. You know what? When you want something to, to go your way, you look for whatever excuse that you can make for it. A thousand percent. That is human nature. It is. And so it's, this is the two things with the alcohol. Well, my red wine's got respiratory ristrate ral. Take the supplement. Yeah. Go eat some food. Exactly. That is, that is a, I hear that all the That is the worst damn excuse I've ever heard in my life. And I grew up in an Italian household.

Me too. I understand the whole wine dinner culture component. My family's full Italian and I despise wine. You're like, I can't do it. 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. So we're whining. Yeah. So when you start to say, oh, but once in a while and once in a while and all of this, it okay fine it may not kill you right now but did just like you you said it perfectly every time you drink it there's poison going into your system and you can call it fearmogic whatever it's a fact it's it's proven drink till 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 the sleep alone

where you know it's you're not going to be able to get a deep sleep it's going to be impacting your blood sugar you know, the next day you're going to feel crappier. You're, you're like, I need take ibuprofen. I'm like, oh, I'm going to 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 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. Yes. 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 and decide what you want to do with your life. No, because my mom drank soda every day and smoked cigarettes and lived to be 100. Yeah. That's the one I get all the time. All the time.

Oh, man. Like, well, what's the laundry list of medications ever on? Exactly. And how well was that 100 years? Did we live well into our Centarian years? Right. Exactly. I just whatever.

skincare time. Ooh, yay. Everyone's favorite topic. Mine too. Love it. I modeled in my 20s for a decade, so I've used every skincare under the sun. You're familiar? I am so damn familiar.

So let's go down the line then on, because some of these are really expensive. Arm and a leg. Yeah. Like a fortune. Some of the ones that I'll bring up by name that I use that were like, because I have hypopigmentation, I did. I think I worked a lot through it with some of the, the skin correctors that I used.

And Skin Medica 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? It depends on the brand, not the branding. I like to say that skincare is a tool in the toolbox. A lot of people say, Katie, do I just stop using my skincare?

I'm like, no, no, we want to have skincare because it's helping to reduce the severity, help to, you know, help with the scarring, the pigmentation. Like having a good skincare routine is important. I don't think that you always have to be spending an outrageous amount on all of the high-end products. I understand people have budgets and, like, we need to work within their budget. But I do think if you're going to spend your money on one type of skincare product is going to be your serums.

So your serums is where the science behind it matters, the delivery system matters. We wanted to go deeper into the skin. So if I'm going to be spending investing my money in something, it'll be a serum. And then maybe your cleanser or like your face cream, you could do a little cheaper. But it really is that science behind it. But again, like 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, you know, 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 trend on TikTok where it's like I don't wash my face in the morning. I think it's going to be dependent on the person and where they are. I personally still wash my face twice a day, but we don't want to be doing it more than that because we're going to be stripping our skin barrier.

We want to 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 like stacked acids and harsh ingredients. Okay, so when you wash your face, like I used to have a clarisonic that would, you know, is that bad or good?

Or how do you recommend washing your face? face? Always have clean hands. Yeah, of course. So, you know, I find a lot of times those tools can harbor bacteria. And if they're not getting sterilized and clean properly. So, you know, the clean hands, making sure that you're singing like your ABCs, you know, once or twice to like get right into the hair line, like under the jaw line.

If you are wearing makeup, especially in the evening for women, you know, you want to be doing maybe a double cleanse. So maybe you're using an oil-based cleanser to be physically breaking the SBF 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 SBF. Thoughts on moisturizers because I've had so many different differing opinions there. I think they're quite important. And I know especially if people are like, oh, I have oily skin, I can't moisturize.

Well, if we're constantly dehydrating, your skin's going to say, oh, I don't have enough hydration here. I need to produce more seabum. So we're producing more of that sticky, oily substance that'll clog the pores and lead to break out. 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 of a 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?

We probably need a full other episode for that alone. This is actually how I got into the health and wellness space. Okay. Because I, growing up, like, I had like a six foot long makeup table from IKEA, had like Mac makeup and all of like the classic early 2000s makeup and hair stuff. It was out of hand. And my mom bought, I was probably like 19 at the time. My mom bought me in this book called there's lead in your lipstick.

And I was like, mom, this is BS. I don't have lead in my lipstick. My products are fine. And just so a piece, her, I started reading. I'm like, there's no way. And I remember sitting in my bedroom, flip. flipping over, bottle after the bottom, are you in the garbage? Every single product had multiple hormone disrupting ingredients, multiple cancer-causing ingredients. And what's interesting is, you know,

they say the average woman puts on over 168 chemicals on her body every single day. Because think about it, you wash your face, you brush your teeth, you shampoo your hair, your conditioner, maybe you put your 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, an act was past where 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 of, oh, well, if someone complains and there's an issue, then we'll look at the safety issues. So a lot of these

ingredients that we've been using for decades had never been safety tested. And even if they are safety tested, we have no way of knowing the cumulative effects of not just that one product, but how are the ingredients in 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 cards and ingredients, hormone disrupting, like we're talking paraben, phallates, fragrances, all of these ingredients which are known to mimic

your hormones in your body. So if you're trying to balance your hormones, but you're slathering on, on all of these ingredients that are mimicking hormones in your body. You're, 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, you know, places like the EWG's Skin Deep database where you can go in, type a product in 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 10 on how toxic your products are. I think dirty. Like, there's so many apps you can use. Okay, so here's my advice. Yeah. Without knowing the ingredients by name.

If you pick up a product. Yes. And the ingredient list is longer than a cheesecake factory menu, don't take it. Don't take it. Don't take it. Yeah. Put it back. Oh, shit.

Some of those are like a book. It's insane. Seriously. Because, you know, I've always done that with the protein powders where you pick some up and it's like, man, there's way too many ingredients in here. And then I see the ones with four or five. And it's like, okay. and we're talking.

Yeah, I did a run through Ulta the other day and did that picking out stuff. It's terrifying. Yeah, it is. And I finally found one, you know,

few body washes and stuff that are like four or five ingredients. You know, I want one more question from you. Because Dr. Pampa, especially and me, got into this about anything

that has a scent. Yes. Is it really bad to have anything scented? Because I had to be careful with the lavender around my cat. It freaked me out because I didn't realize.

And I threw everything I, Because it'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 fragrances is kind of as scary. It's like once you go out on the rabbit hole with ingredients in 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 in it. And what's interesting about fragrance is it's a loophole for a lot of manufacturers where they can hide undisclosed ingredients labeled as fragrance because it's considered a trade secret. Like you don't have to disclose your trade secret. Uh-huh. So it's, I think they did a study. few years ago and they took like to the top 13 perfumes across the US and they found that there was an act there was an insane amount like six seven eight sometimes 12 ingredients in the perfume that wasn't listed on the ingredient list.

Oh shit. And how do you know that those aren't cancer causing hormone disrupting ingredients? So fragrance is a pretty scary one. We have so many things that we're going to have to get into on another one like I really want to get into like colognes, perfumes, fragrances, toothpaste, like all of this stuff. It's a whole other world. Yeah, but like ingredients, breakdowns and stuff. Because 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, it's idiopathic, we can't figure out what's wrong with you. It's sitting on your counter. It's in your drawer, your medicine cabinet, the culprit. But also 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, like it's 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 of 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 and everything we have and everything with red dye or sucralose 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 still using.

pisses me off the most. Like you'll still, like, you still find talc and paraben's in children's products. And it's even worse for children because 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,

I'm like, I'm in. I'm in. Just forget it. They're innocent. They're innocent beings. Anything that hurts an animal or a child I'm in. In,

auto in. Yeah. It's sickening. It's sickening. It's sickening what, what manufacturers will do. Well, we're going to 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 you got to showcase multi facets 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 anywhere 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 because I did, and I think that everything you said resonated extremely well. So I appreciate it. Thank you for having. Tell everybody where they can find you and anything that you may offer or 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 Katie Stewart Wellness, across the board, social media at Katie Stewart Wellness. Our podcast, keep it clear. They want to come and get help with us. They can work with us inside the Clear Skin Solution. They can find us at Katie Stewart Wellness.com. Sweet. Go check her out because the information I knew was going to be good, but I didn't realize it was going to 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 and thank you for your work.

Thank you. I appreciate that. That being said, everyone, stay tuned for plenty more to come. Dylan Jameli and Katie Stewart, signing off.