Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Eczema: What Is It, Types, Causes, Symptoms & How to Treat It - With Christa Biegler

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

For full show notes, resources mentioned, and transcripts, go to: www.drmindypelz.com/ep162/. To enroll in Dr. Mindy's Fasting membership, go to: resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. This episode is all about overcoming eczema, tips for healthy skin, and the importance of liver wellness. Christa Biegler is an award-winning dietitian nutritionist, host of the Less Stressed Life podcast, and author of The Eczema Relief Diet & Cookbook. She helps health-savvy women overcome food sensitivities and fatigue without restrictive dieting to beat bloat, burnout & eczema breakouts. She lives with her unicycling husband & kids in the Midwest. The Less Stressed Life Podcast & Nutrition mission is that everyone deserves a less stressed life without inflammation, food sensitivities, and fatigue.  Please see our medical disclaimer.

One mantra with healing is that our health is as good as our nervous system. Hey, Dr. Mindy here. And welcome to season four of the Resetter podcast. Have I got a lineup for you this season? Lots of deep thinkers, a lot of brilliant minds, all with one focus to move the needle forward on your mental and physical health. So please know that. this podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. And I want you believing in your body. I want you believing in your mind. I want you believing in your spirit. If you have a

passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. Enjoy. I'm so happy you're here. And we're going to talk about something that literally we have never talked about on this is our fourth season never talked about this so and that's eczema and and really skin conditions in general is what i want to dive into so just so everybody has a little bit of a i love i love people's passions like how the heck did you get like passionate about exa well i didn't it came to me first so probably so let me give you i'll try to make the the version brief and try to make it feel like you maybe have felt or someone who's listening has maybe felt. I remember in high school going to the dermatologist, getting some creams,

using them intermittently and saying, I have genetic eczema, right? Because my sisters would have like this dry skin, hairline thing. And it was worse in the winter. And this is the thing. We'll talk a little bit about how different eczema can present. Some of it's worse in the summer. Some of it's worse in the winter. Probably your audience is a little bit like me. I bet more of us are worse in the winter where it's more of a dry skin presentation. And then I was taking my kids to swimming lessons for a week straight and in the pool every single day. And after like about the fifth straight day, I came out, woke up with this horrific raging angry rash that I had not had before. It was all around my eye and oozing and swelling. I mean, it was very painful and on my

neck. It was in these really cool places. I could totally hide. Just kidding. So, you know, we can hide things inside our gut, inside our body, we can deal with our brain fog, our lack of energy. We cannot hide this thing on our skin. And it often moves us to action. There's a quote, it's not my quote, but I use it a lot that were moved to action from either inspiration or desperation. And I see that all the time, right? As you do, right? Where we are usually, it's via desperation. And that was not unlike me. And if I look back on that, I was transitioning jobs, starting a new business, had two small kids. So the stressors were there. I just needed a straw to break the camels back. And I had the genetic predisposition. I did not, I think like saying my

exima was related to or blaming it on genetics was so short-sighted, but just my high school, it was as far as I could see, right? I didn't know any different at that time. And then for it to kind of act a bit differently was really interesting, right? So I needed the straw that broke the camel's back. In hindsight, you know, I did a ton of gut, liver work, et cetera. In hindsight, there was definitely some halogen stuff there and thyroid stuff there, which later presented. a few years later, even more, and I was able to see through that. But it just was not very fun, right? So that was kind of my story. It sucked. I found I tried to find a lot of practitioners to help me. And there is kind of a generic toolbox for eczema of fatty acids, probiotics, whatever.

Sometimes you see it. Cool. And you're like, oh, yeah, that's kind of the generic eczema toolbox. But there's a lot more that can be done. And so, unfortunately, to your point, there's actually not a lot of people who do, like, focus on skin issues. And so, like I said, it didn't, I mean, I really wanted to hide that piece of me, right? I don't even have a ton of pictures of that time of my life because you hate how you look when you're going through something like that. And so, and really what happened was I was doing a presentation for someone maybe a year later about the difference between allergies, sensitivities, and tolerances. And there was a couple parents and they wanted some help with their kids. And the rest was history.

Right. So I started helping people. And what happens when you have an intimate experience of something as you understand it a little bit differently, right? than someone hasn't. Yeah. Well, you know, I was actually talking to a friend the other day and I was like, what is it about when you discover something? This is my personality.

And this was hers as well. Like when you discover an interesting tool that helps you, that makes you want to tell everybody. You're like, oh, my God, this can help you. And there's, and something like eczema, you know, there's, it's a dead end. And even like rosacea and a lot of people with menopausal skin changes. like there just seems to be a dead end for information. We don't know what to do. And so I love when somebody has a passion and sort of a nichey kind of little spot like Exima because we need a bigger

perspective on this. And to your point, one of the things that I want to really emphasize to people listening is how many people are given diagnoses that are like, yeah, it's genetic. Not much you can do about it. And whenever that's the diagnosis, honestly, I call bullshit on that. It's like, no, that's the doctor saying, this is what I know. Here's the medication. Here's the diagnosis. This is the way I know it to be. But then someone like you stumbles into our lives and you're like, but wait, there's actually 20 million things you can do for this one condition. I feel like there's a lot of opportunity, right? Always. You always have an option. So don't feel like you you don't. And that's probably one of the frustrating things that people learn

pretty quickly when they're dealing with the skin issue is that the toolbox, unfortunately, our prescription and medical toolbox is really not very deep for the prevalence of skin. Yeah, that's a lot. That's a lot of conditions. It's just like, where's the depth of the toolbox is really well said. So just so we're all on the same page, explain to me what eczema is. Like, how would you know you have it and what does it look like? Yeah, eczema is just the name of a group of conditions that causes skin to become red, itchy,

and inflamed. There's a lot of types of eczema. It's really another name for atopic dermatitis as well. You'll use those terms pretty interchangeably. Contact dermatitis, which can mean some things, dyshydratic eczema, numular eczema. These are just different presentations, subborate, severia dermatitis, stasis dermatitis. So these are all kind of presenting on a little different angle or different form or shape or whatever. But in general, we're giving them all the same treatment. And so kind of setting the stage for eczema, and I know we're not necessarily, if you've got people who are in their 20s, 30s, 40s, whatever, we could all have kids. So if you've had children, you may have had kids, right? 10 to 20 percent of kids are affected, maybe 5 percent of adults.

I mean, it could be less than that, right? Where are we getting kind of our data? And what will happen is sometimes you'll have it as a kid. It'll go away and it'll represent it as an adult, which I think has some meaning. So what do we agree about universally is that there is a staff. infection, usually common present. Not on every single, every single time, but this is why I always ask for a picture. If the skin looks red, inflamed, angry, in skin, darker skin, melanated skin, this can look more kind of pink and maybe even gray. So it's good to think about that,

because sometimes we get misdiagnosed with darker skin or melanated skins. I always try to reference that it's not always this bright pink red. But if it's bright, brink red, and And kind of, like oozing would be like the final straw. There's probably a staff infection present. So just one comment, it's kind of frustrating. Sometimes people, sometimes the provider will not culture for staff. So there can be a staff overgrowth or there can be fungal overgrowth. The staff cultures are supposedly a little bit better according to integrative

germs that I've interviewed. So that's one thing. And also a lot of times it comes back accurate, but no test is perfect. So sometimes it'll come back negative. and people still respond to things that would work on topical staff. So what's that telling you? You've got a topical staff issue. So I just like to put that out there.

That's one thing we do kind of agree on universally that eczema does have a top topical staff component. But what you've got to think about then is, okay, where's that come from? It grows from the inside out. So you'll see like illnesses and things really cause relapse. I would say people do not make progress when they're sick, right? They've got overgrowth of things. And then that'll show up up to three weeks later.

So that's a little fun. pearl that you can not have an issue and then you can have an illness in three weeks to a month later you'll have a little bit of a skin presentation. Why do I know that? Because it's happened to me. Right. Right. So, and clients commonly. So just throwing that in there. That was more of a answer than you were asking. But I just want to set the stage of what we kind of agree about or the big picture on X-Math. So, no, it's that one of the things that I really talk about in my reset academy with the members over there is that when we hear information like this, if we put it in into an old paradigm, the paradigm of give me the quick fix, give me the diagnosis, and everything's

going to go away. We're only setting ourselves up for failure. And what I love about the context you just gave is that, and what I'm hearing is that there's a new paradigm in which we need to look at this. And if staff is the source of it, then my brain goes to, well, what are the other symptoms? Like, if we have eczema, that is the outward expression of it, are there other symptoms that we would see in our body that the staff infection is affecting. Yeah. Well, absolutely. And this kind of makes me want to stand back.

I want to answer that question, but I kind of want to stand back and talk about all the ways that can present or what you should prioritize a little bit as well. Let me start with staff. I mean, that could look like, what are some other common things that you'll see? Could be anything, right? This is where I really recommend as a starting place.

Because what we see is like, oh, I have terrible eczema. but I may not be thinking about these other things that are not a diagnosis, right? And so I always ask people to Google multiple symptom questionnaires or symptom survey online and just fill that out really honestly because you might notice that you have a bit of congestion. You might notice that you have some throat clearing after a meal, which can be kind of like a little more fungal in my opinion. You might notice that you're, hey, maybe I'm not having a ball moment every single day consistently, which by the way, the skin is a one really easy way your body detoxes. So we can talk about mechanisms of detoxation, which is important. So this is why I think I think the bottom line with eczema is that we wanted to be simple. We want it to be topical and it's actually twice as hard. It's internal and external. That's the main piece that you need to know is that internal and external. So you've got to support the topical skin barrier. So I was telling you kind of offline, sometimes I look at any condition. I'm like, okay, what, how can we address this from different angles? And so there's this health triad, right? And so you can do, if you imagine a triangle, you can pretty much put any condition into the triangle and say,

what are the angles I can fill in? So there's the structural or external. And so with the exhumant, it's like, I've got to support the skin barrier. If it's broken, fix it. Like, it is not, you're going to have more stuff coming in. And so something that happened in the last couple of years that might be of note or interest is that we use so much alcohol, hand sanitizer. We disrupted our top of the skin microbiome on our skin. Yes. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. We created a structural issue, right? So what's supposed to happen is our skin has this phospholipid layer. right? It's got this naturally antimicrobial fatty acid layer on the top of it. And so when you continually strip that off over and over and over, you screw with your body's ability to combat

things naturally. And so then you allow things to come in and like set up a new environment or microbiota on the skin and then it can get like kind of out of hand. Right. So if the skin barrier is broken, whether you've got acne or eczema or whatever, you've got to try to heal the skin barrier as quickly as you can. There's a bunch of nourishing nutrients and things I like to do is there's a bath salt that's got silica in it and MSM and those things like help heal the skin a little faster. There's there's different topicals that help heal the skin faster if you can do this. There's actually there's actually so many angles we could talk about this from because when you're dealing imagine that you do have a topical staff infection. What are some of the issues? Well, I've got to

control the staff. I've got to support the skin berry from breaking down, you know, and I've got to clean my skin, right? So there's three different angles that you can do just from a topical perspective to support that area depending on what it's kind of looking like, right? So. So, Yeah. Can I ask you one question on the barrier? Because I think the skin barrier is a really interesting concept from many angles. I was at a skin seminar years ago. And one of the doctors got up to talk about how the microbiome on the skin, actually they found has a connection to the microbiome in the gut. Like there is a neurological connection. So when we look at something like hand sanitizers, when we look at something like toxic soaps, like when I travel, I bring my own. soap. What we don't realize is we're destroying that microbiome, which is a part of the protective barrier, and that is also going the other way where it's affecting the gut. So talk just so everybody understands because I've been saying for the last three years, like all this hand sanitizer is going to have a massively negative effect because people are lathering themselves in it. Why is that bad?

Okay, so if you kill all, it's kind of like an antibiotic topically, right? You're killing all good and bad. It's just like if you spray the lawn, I always use, love using grass for an example with the microbiome. And it really lends itself to a lot of great analogies. So if you spray the grass and the weeds dead, what grows back first? Weeds. They're opportunistic. And that is exactly, it's so funny how we are so much like nature. We are at a direct mirror. We are. So the best might to understand ourselves is to look at what's going on around you. And on that topic, I just want to say as women, there's a reason we have a 28 to 30 day cycle.

There's another part of nature that has that same cycle. And it's waxing and waning, you know? It's like we have lost that connection. You are spot on. It's so cool how so many things happen with the moon. Like any ER nurse will tell you that's like when shit happens or that's when babies are born. The Dula will say, I've only scheduled three families a month, but they all have the be the same time during the full moon.

We are so connected to nature. We are so connected. So if you kill everything, the opportunistic stuff will grow back. On the note of like antibiotics, for example, when you kill all the bacteria, the fungus will have a party, right? When you kill everything on the skin, the alcohol's kind of killing everything to our knowledge, you know, either one of those can grow back. And so what we do have positive and not as good bacteria, no matter what, it's just that

we want to have more good bacteria than that, right? Because otherwise, the weeds overpower the grass. And so what happens if I'm going to use dandelions, you know, we can, we can have all of our feelings about dandelions, but we understand them. So what happens with weeds? They steal the nutrients. So they make it hard for people to heal. They slow down healing time. So relevant to your skin, right? Because you'll notice like, oh, I break my skin and it's like it takes forever to heal. That is like really poor nutrient status. So the weeds will steal the nutrients. They, give off their own toxins. So those endotoxins,

they got to go somewhere. It's like increasing the trash output, right? And so if you have a bunch of people over and you're increasing all the trash, you're not taking out the trash as much, it's got to go somewhere. And the skin's a real safe place for it to show up. So back to the weeds. They steal the nutrients. And then they also impair digestion.

And so this does not always look like, oh, I have all these digestive symptoms. But when you have things on the skin, let's say, let's say someone, eat something and they see some symptom or they see their skin flare. That's a symptom of poor digestion. That's what that is. So you're not digesting that particular food, food or protein. And that undigested matter is being fed to the dandelions. They love that kind of food. The weeds love that. The dysbiotic bacteria love that. And then they thrive. And then it's like this self-replicating process or like it's like a hamster wheel that just continues to feed itself. So it's so tricky for people when they eat a food and they see a reaction.

And I would boil that down to poor digestion, which is I think, and that's a real epidemic because all of our digestive adequacy or our stomach acid, our bile, our digestive enzymes are all suppressed under stressful things, right? So what happens is stress, we've got minerals, all of those things are pieces of how we digest. So I went off on a bit of a tangent and I should get to the truck. Yeah, no, but let's, so what I'm hearing on the barrier is it's a two-way street. It's like, you know, the gut barrier and the skin barrier. Like, you've got to protect the gut

barrier. You've got to protect the skin barrier. So, but I love where you're going with this, with eczema also being an internal challenge and an external challenge. So is there something, what, have you found in all of your research, have you found anything that we can do to protect that external skin barrier so we don't get a staff infection leading to eczema? So, I mean, I think it depends of where you are when you're healing journey. My friend who works with cancer, she's like, well, are you in the middle of treating it or are you post? You know, so

if you're close. Like I don't have axioma, but I always want to just protect my skin barrier. Okay, perfect. That's great. So some integrative dermatologist, his name is Robbie, I think it's Rajah Sivamani. I love what he says. He says, don't over soap,

wash the pits, right? And so wash the areas that need to be washed and don't soap up everything else. So, kind of to your point earlier, when you use microbiota disrupting soap, so this stuff with like, essentially the antimicrobial soaps, not that you should be really using those in the shower, but if you use those everywhere, you're disrupting your microbiome and you could be creating a problem that you would not otherwise have. That's one thing, right? The next thing is, I think we should step back and say, am I a really dry skin profile? Am I using a lot of lot of lotions, et cetera?

I like to hydrate from the inside. I like to make sure my, I'm like, that's a real, nerdy thing to say like oh i've got dry skin i should go work on my fatty acids instead of slathering lotion on the outside i'm geeking out on what you're saying so no worries so um i think that there are times like and i'm i'm not i'll preface this by saying like i'm not an esthetician but when the seasons change it's okay to change your topical care products too so right now we're in the winter at the time of this recording so i would say lean more into the oils right like topical oils i do not mean coconut oil. Coconut oil has, and we could go to bad about this, this comes from a microbiologist that I respect, where if you put coconut oil on your skin really consistently, you're also disrupting

the topical microbiome because it's got really awesome antifungal properties. So it may have helped your kid's cradle cap, which is a fungal origin typically, right? It's got some antifungal properties, but it's not the oil that you typically want to use topically. I like things that I've seen work really nicely, or hajoba oil is really a nice one. If you can get something that's got some, I'm thinking of a, I don't feel like it's camomile, but there are some things that are mixed up and kind of like you. Like we try things and we're like, oh, I really like how that works on my skin. Yeah.

So we use like, I always say start with the most basic of things, right? Like the lesser or the simpler products and expand from there. One thing that, one mistake I would say that happens when people have eczema is and this happens. all of us and it happens in other conditions is we end up with a graveyard of stuff, right? Because we're like, oh, I'm itching in the middle of the night. I get up and put like anything on. And one thing I would encourage when you're working on topical skin barrier stuff is to use something for a bit of a prescribed time, maybe one, like anywhere from three days to two weeks and then switch it up. Because what can happen with this, to your point, you talked about the skin and gut connection.

And there's a lot we can say about that, right? So if it, if it heals the tissue, it heals the tissue. It helps heal the skin tissue. It helps heal the gut lining tissue. In general, if you've got eczema, if you're changing things, yes. If you, like with kids, you use lotions with oatmeal. And so sometimes people will start reacting to that because they've got leaky skin. And so they've got, they've got tight gap junctions in the skin as well.

And so it gets in there. And then the body, when you start using something all the time, you've got permeability, you can start to have a reaction to it. So this is just a thought or a reason. you might want to change things up. Yeah. So what I heard is that you got to get to know your skin type. You got to look at the seasons and you got to find something natural that works for you.

So and you just gave us that. Now, okay, go. So that's the skin barrier. So you talked about the, I think you said it was a triad. Yeah. Go to the other. You want to think about, you know, that external structural stuff you can do. So skin barrier, whether it's antimicrobial healing or cleansing, right?

So those are the three angles there. The next one. Well, let me go to the other angle, then we'll come back to nutritional. So it's emotional and then nutritional. So stress is a huge piece of things. We already talked about how stress suppresses all digestive enzyme status. If we're not digesting things, we're going to have essentially more trash, right? That's not going to be used properly by the body.

We're not going to have nutrients. It's like kind of a whole thing, right? So one thing I would say, and I haven't talked about this too much, but just how things present, when people, and this might resonate with this audience, we've already talked a little bit about the disruption of topical microbiota. hands. One thing I'll see is in babies, it'll usually present behind the knees and inside the elbows in these traditional places. Then if that goes away, we quote unquote grow out of it. And by the ways, there's this atopic march where you may have eczema, you may have allergies, you may have asthma

later in life, it may grow into some other version of this immune exacerbation. Um, so we've got that. And I think that in kiddos, when it's presenting that way, or if it's presenting kind of this round circular pattern, it's very gut mediated. That's going to be kind of a priority. But you heard me talk about detoxification and we'll get, we'll get back to that because the skin is a place for things to be eliminated. So I think that's a little bit more of a drier presentation. I'll come. Let's come back to that when we get to the nutritional corner. But as far as the emotional corner goes, the frosting on this building of the cake of like, what interventions do I need to do?

Stress seems to be implicated in hand eczema so much without much doubt. So people will be doing fine and they'll give me this whole history. and maybe they've never even had eczema before. So maybe they've disrupted their hand microbiota accidentally or maybe there's some stressful component. So under stress, we dump like B5 can be a big deal for hand eczema for some reason. We dump that under stress and sometimes I'll do like it's kind of one of the last things I'll do because I'll do all kinds of other foundational things.

But sometimes I'll bring in a high dose of that and see how that will change things. But that's the interesting piece about stress. And one mantra with healing is that our health is as good as our nervous system. If we have nervous system dysfunction or stress that's really not very controlled. And I'm not trying to be a broken record, but it's just there's so many different ways to look at it, right? It can be emotional stress. It can be physical stressors.

So I've had women who had speaking of skin conditions, there's one and you might, you might get the name correct, liken something where it's in the vagina, right? So it's like the thickening of skin in the vagina. It feels like being stabbed there. That pain is a stressor, right? So like you may be like, I'm doing well. I've got this and this and this. But that message of pain all day to your brain is like, yeah, it's a lot for your stress

chemicals. And you'll start to see other symptoms of stress present like tension headaches and all kinds of and like restless leg and other stuff. So that's the emotional piece. I just don't think we can ever go like leave that piece. But if I see someone come in the door with hand eczema, it's one of the first pieces we talk about it because really we're baking a cake here. And as a baby and if the exome,

looks a certain way. I'm going to work on the gut and hope that I don't have to do a ton of other things. And then the next layer is going to be like, I've got to add liver. We'll talk about that next. Then the next layer is going to be stress. And so, um, so hand eczema is such a just like that pain of being stabbed in the vagina, hand eczema, because it's painful and it's, you use your hands all the time and they're broken open. They just kind of, it's like a self-feeding cycle loop also where it can be painful. So my priority with hand eczema or that emotional version, I would call it, that's a piece of it, is trying to repair that skin barrier again and start working on the nervous system and then I'll get into detox and gut stuff. So that's okay so let's so let me just sort of sum it up to make sure because

there was a lot it was really dense there was a lot in that so I want to make sure that people can know how to apply what you just said so when we look at the triad it's the gut it's the barrier and that's structural yeah it's structural and external I'll get to gut in a second when we do nutritional. So it's structural, it's nutritional, it's emotional. Yes, those are the three eight. I just want to, that way, when you guys are listening, you might, when you're hearing what she's saying, there's like a thread of like, oh, that's me. But I want to make sure that they put it in some kind of context. So if you have eczema and you're like, oh my God, it's on my hands, what I just heard is, okay, that's an emotional. That could be a very, there's a large chance. That's an emotional.

emotional part of eczema. Is that how you kind of diagnose it? Yep. So that's a place that you have to start. I would say, and I can also like make sure we go back and summarize this all at the end because I talk fast and I move around a lot. And if we don't have.

I just want to make sure people, I want people to walk away from this and go, okay, I know what to do because you're giving so much great information. I just, I want to know how to put it together for people. Totally. Totally.

And we can, yeah, again, summarize it a little bit. But you're exactly right. If it's on my hands, I need to look at the stressors. in my life as the first step.

So I would say there's like three big areas, right? So aside from everyone's got to worry about their structural or external or topable layer, right? Like no matter what. And then there's layers of like, where do I start first? Do I start with my, is stress my priority? Is my liver my priority? Is my gut my priority? So in the emotional angle or if you are having a presentation of hand eczema, your emotions are a huge part of the priority.

Yes, you need to heal your skin barrier because everyone does, right? If it's broken open, if the hands are broken open, if the skin is broken open, Everyone's got to do that, but stress is like the very top layer. And so I see that more on adults than anyone else. Like if it's a kiddo, it's maybe not going to be that, but it's interesting how things mirror, right? We are mirrors of our children as well. So there's a lot that could be said about that. So triad, we got our structural external, we got our emotional.

Now we got the nutritional. So we kind of like went backwards to kind of get there, right? But we've talked a few pieces. We already talked a little bit about that nutritional angle. That can be a lot of things. But let's make sure we put gut stuff. Let's make sure we put liver stuff. let's make sure we put adrenal stuff with all of the things.

Thyroid stuff. So if we had to create a checklist right now, we have the structure. We have the outside barrier. We have stress. Now we have gut. Let's talk a little bit about what destroys the gut that would actually give the manifestation of eczema. Yeah.

So I'm going to start at the beginning of life and move through life a little bit as quickly as possible. If I'm talking to someone a newer parent or someone with less than a five-year-old, I'm getting that birth history and find, out was baby vaginally delivered or C-section delivered, right? Because we're going to have a disruption of the innate microbiome right there. We're going to find out if there's C-section, if there's a vaginal swab, if there was group B strep, if there was antibiotics throughout birth. And then what happened post-birth, right? So like what was going on post-birth, the first year,

two, three, four of life, how many ear infections were there, et cetera. It's really with kiddos. You're going to see a lot of antibiotic use. I had one really cool parent that did something that no one else has done. She said, I went ahead, they lived in the same town, their whole, their 11 year old's whole life. And she said, I just called the pharmacy and asked them to give me a list for how many times my kid had been in antibiotics. And I was really surprised. I didn't remember that. Right. So we don't remember things that are not an issue, right? But when we're trying to build a case, we look for evidence. And so I always say to people, I just want things to make sense, right? And I've only had one time in the last many years of practice where someone was like, nope,

that didn't. And anyway, it didn't like, that just things make sense. Right. And then like things you can build. So antibiotic use and eczema makes sense. That's what I just heard, especially childhood antibiotics and eczema are a thing. Yeah. And then the other thing I look for is genetic predisposition. So does either parent have a history or in kind of that immediate family of the atopic March, eczema allergies asthma?

If you do, you may struggle to, there are some genes like DAO and H&MT that might be a little slower. It doesn't mean that's the blame. So genes are the cards you're dealt. How you play the cards with what happens in a lifestyle is what brings the manifestation. So for example, my genetics aren't like real primed for eczema. I could have had eczema a zillion times after that flare. I listen to my body. And it's funny, Mindy, I can go on a, for years after I had that flare, I could go on a trip

and be very indulgent and drink like crappy coffee, which can be very toxicically. I need to support my liver. It's a thing, right? So I can, and we can talk about all the ways I would know that, like the outward symptoms you could look at to. And I think that's a really big thing for your audience, honestly, because this is where most of people are going to fall, I think. Okay. So we'll make it cover next. Yeah, we'll cover that. So I can go drink really crappy coffee, which can be very toxicly. And it's not something I have at home all the time. And I'll feel a sensation around my eye where I used to have eczema. It isn't like flare. I just feel a sensation. And I say, whoa, Nellie. I've got to go give myself a little support, right? Quit, quit like dump. toxic burden down my throat. Like my bucket is getting too full from that. Much better now. I don't seem to have that. But like for a long time afterwards, you're still, you always want to be more supportive than aggravating to your system. So you listen. And so if you have eczema, let's just talk about what what is like does. Right. So we talked about skin barrier. If that's

broken, you must fix it. And the skin is an obvious place for the body to get rid of waste. Right. So go back to the show. So we know that the guts involved. We know that childhood. antibiotics. I would think antibiotics any other time, even in your life has been issue. Are there foods, just before we leave that and go to the liver? Are there foods that we know are absolutely going to flare eczema up? So if you're working on eczema and you have that kind of bright pink, et cetera, exacerbation and it's worse in the summer, histamine is almost always implicated. Is that a real root cause problem? No, it's just a stepping stone. So another huge mistake is over-restricting for so long to where your life sucks, right? Because ultimately you should digest well. That is my

opinion after many years in my business starting and food sensitivity work and it working until it didn't work, right? You, we want to do the thing that's going to be the least stressful. So a lot of people come to me, they've already, they've already removed a lot of things. And so that could be good or bad, right? It just kind of depends. But I would say the top eight allergens and histamines are almost always a problem in eczema, but there's especially a problem if you are someone with seasonal allergies or your eczema gets worse in the heat with hot water in the summer, et cetera. That's all drivers of histamine. And so genetically, you can have these genes that don't break down histamine as well. And then it's going to look like food sensitivities, right? And it is, but it's fixable

because your gut and your liver are implicated in how you break down histamine. So this is important. And what's this to mean? Tomatoes, bananas, avocado, anything for, it's basically our shirkutery board, wine,

beer, cheese. Don't say that. I love my sarkutory board. Oh, I do too. So my point is,

I find myself in a really good charcuttery board. Yeah, my point is not, oh, you should, like, that's off limits for you

if you have eczema. My point is, this could be adding a little insult to injury because your system aren't breaking down histamine and eliminating it properly, almost always, like most of the time. So, okay, go to the top. Can you just give us the top eight? Because I think there's something really, can you like tell us just what are the top eight allergies that we should? Allerogens. Yeah. Allergens. Let's try.

I'll try my best to remember them off the top of my brain. Um, dairy, wheat, eggs, fish, certain fish, sorry, I don't know. I think it might be shellfish and not white fish. It's really cute that you asked me this question because I have a book on this topic. These are good. I mean, if people are listening, that was already a lot to take out. It was. It was. Exactly.

And I will tell you, I don't think that this is very important if you have liver derived eggs in this. So let's actually recap. Let's recap. Well, maybe I should not jump around. We're going to go to liver next. It's okay if you don't remember them all. I just wanted to go to move action items.

Okay. So go to deliver up. That's only important, I think, if you're, eczema presents a certain way. I want to be very clear about that. And it's only a stepping stone. And if you get stuck there, it's because you didn't do the rest of the rest of the things. You got to support the gut in the liver. That's how histamine really gets out. It's broken down in the gut via enzymes. If your gut has too many dandelions in it, it impairs enzyme function. Okay. And then if your gut's got too many dandelions, it's jammed up the detox. And then

the histamine cannot be eliminated. One more detail that might be really useful. This is 100% your case if your skin gets worse during your ovulation or right before your. your menstrual cycle because histamine and estrogen essentially followed the same pathway. They're like, oh, broken down in the gut and eliminated via the liver. So if it's all jammed up with dandelions, like it's kind of a mess, right? Would you see it more in the back half of your cycle? You might see a flare up because that's when you're detoxifying estrogen. Exactly.

Yeah. Exactly. So what you want to do there is just track, does this seem cyclical in the month? That's it, right? And then you kind of time it where it's at in your cycle and you look this up and say, oh, that does seem to follow that, right? So that's kind of what you're doing is you're being a sleuth of your body, right? You're like tracking because people like, oh, I don't know.

It seems to come and go every two weeks. I'm like, sounds like it's coming and going to go. Yeah. Well, and my mission is to get women to start looking at everything that comes and goes and mapping it to their cycle. So I didn't want that to go by. Yeah. So, okay, talk to us about the liver because the liver, I mean, I could probably do a whole year

of podcasting on the liver and it's influence on every aspect of our health. So go ahead and talk about where it intertwines for axioma. So we already talked about how if you have hand eczema, you really got to prioritize the stress piece. That's going to be the top layer. We already talked about if it's presenting like bright, red, patchy, circular, gut might be your priority. Now let's talk about liver priority because I would say for the people you told me that are

listening to this podcast, we're the people that this impacts, right? So we may have had some eczema as a kid, but now it's represented. Usually we add a layer and it's the liver, right? Like we don't get less toxic burden as we get older, we get more, right? Yeah. What are some signs and symptoms that the liver is, so the exomal is going to look like this. It's going to be dry and flaky. It's usually worse in the wintertime.

It might present around the, so Chinese face mapping is like liver is eyes. That's just a tiny detail. It could, so I would say dry and flaky is the big thing. Why is that? The liver, the liver is one of its primary jobs is produced bile. The bile breaks down fatty. acids the fatty acids go and get get used in every little cell and so if you don't have a nice little fatty acid layers around every little cell then you have like this dry flaky skin appearance

this is a simple way to talk about it so I would say dry flaky is kind and worse in the winter is definitely liver stuff what are some other liver signs of symptoms because unfortunately our lab work for liver is like not the amazing in my opinion it's well said it's not it's not amazing you're probably a hot mess if things are showing up maybe your lipids are going to look a little funny um the other The only other, like, lab thing that it comes to mind is, like, if your liver enzymes are elevated, but if they're elevated, like, that's not good. It might be a fluke or it could be an infection, but there's too many options. I find when liver enzymes are, there's just too many scenarios.

It's how you can make it. Let's use your symptoms because that's a lot. Right. Exactly. That's exactly what I would agree with. There, um, what are some liver ones that, like, the really sneaky interesting ones are like sensitivity to smell. If you say, I've got sensitive skin. Yeah, you are like, that's a contact dermatitis, right? like I'm sensitive to chemicals and touch and like fragrances and those types of things, that is like a good liver sign and symptom for sure. That might be, that might like encapsulate a ton of it right there, right?

Well, and I think everybody needs to work on their liver. So I would just say your liver as well. Yeah. The other thing I would say is the emotion attached to the liver is anger. I love that topic. I love that topic. I love thinking about how our emotions are get stored in our body.

And I think that's where we bridge the gap sometimes between we really want to be like tangible and have this lab result and this answer and trying to make sense of our nervous system impacting what our health is. It's such a whole topic. So, you know, one thing that I've said to my audience a lot is that when I started fasting, it's so healing to the liver that I noticed a lot of anger that I had just went away. Like all of a sudden I just didn't, I couldn't access that emotion very much. but when I was fasting and going through the first couple of years of building myself a fasting

lifestyle in the longer fast the anger came like pouring out and it would be like on day two of a fast and I'd be like what is going on I am just so angry but then it went away as as I loved on my liver and I worked on healing my liver I saw that that emotion really go away I think the most important thing you just said is loving on your liver I think that's the best way to about like an area that really needs support is I'm going to love on my liver I'm going to love on my thyroid I'm going to love on xyz thing I think that's the nicest way to think about it and yeah and so we just talked about like anything that feels like chemical sensitivity or fragrance or topical sense like contact sensitivity is all like huge liver

red flags um and I would say to your point when you're working on something that's supportive of the liver so you're not putting toxic burden in so fasting's a version of that of course right? You can release. Our body wants to store toxins and fat tissue. And so as that stuff is released, you may see these emotions change. You can have like anxiety, can have these headaches, et cetera. Right? You see all that kind of stuff in fast. Yeah. Yeah. And what are some of, you know, we're always looking for new ways to support the liver. But I love what you bring up. Like I had never really thought of the liver as being, you know, and I don't know why I'd never made this connection about how it's showing up in skin conditions. So,

Do you have any, like your favorite liver hacks, like castroil packs, coffee animas, like do you have anything that you've seen specifically for eczema that, you know, when you do these more bitters, when you do these things with your liver, we see a change in the eczema. Yeah. Anything you said there is fine, but I will pick one. And so this goes back to the very beginning of the conversation where it's like, man, the opportunities are great here. You've got a lot of options, right?

Yeah, there's a lot of options. And so when you split this up into pieces of how you could do this because people are like, oh, you want to try all these things. We even take things orally and you can do things exogenously. So you just brought up some exogenous things, which I like to do because how can we reduce this pill and supplement burden in the midst of like our healing? And so I really love infrared sauna, Mindy, because infrared sauna does a couple things with like passive exercise.

So you feel like you did after you exercised in the sauna. It's increasing blood flow. So it's improving that circulation to something that's maybe not healing as fast. So it helps. And it helps get mycotorobotoxy. toxins out, heavy metals out, et cetera. So like our toxic burden is is building up and causing stress to our liver and excess iron as a side note. You know, all of these things can add burden to the liver. So if we can clear these out rarely, but occasionally people use infrared sauna and they're

like, well, I'm a little bit worse at the moment. I don't like the concept if it gets worse before it gets better, just that the toxic burden may be great. I will say that my own, in my own healing story, the reason I probably, probably one of the reasons I love sauna so much is because I got maybe 90% better. No one could see the eczema, but I had this rough skin. And until I use a sauna regularly, that rough skin did not go away because it's just an efficient way for us to clear toxic burden, which is always going to be the things showing up on our skin. Do you use any binders after you get out of the sauna? Because if you're releasing, like should you throw in some activated charcoal in your mouth? I'm sure. I am like cautious about how much I recommend binders. I think that they're essential if you've got

mycotoxin issues. I'm pretty passionate about people not really realizing they've got mild to moderate. mycotoxin or mold issues. That's kind of my area of like mild to moderate and not severe. Let's pick up on this little stuff. So I'm just throwing these like caveats in there. Is there really a problem? No. Binders do bind to nutrients and other supplements.

So it's best to take them one plus two plus even hours away from other foods and things. So I try not to bring in binders if not needed. Some natural good binders that might be a little bit more useful would be like some awesome fiber thing, not Sillam Husk. unless you got loose tools. Not filium, but yeah.

Like takes all the liquid out, right? It's terrible like that. Sunfiber or like wax or there's some different products. So avoid the ones with cillium-ish or make sure they're really low on the list and there's some other good things in there. But like a good fiber might be like really nice. Something with like chlorilla or or or chlorophy or something.

Like a light finder. Yeah. That's not like so. I feel like a charcoal is like it's not really a problem. It's funny that you asked me that because one of my clients asked me that. history says like it's not really an issue i just my brain is like yeah you're a little more aggressive um so i don't think everyone needs such an aggressive binder i do not use a binder post sauna and i'm totally fine what's really important is they use towel off that sweat like i don't know if that's like commonplace or actually yeah

i have best practice of sara and like toweling off the sweat is most important and you know what i um a couple years ago i had a sauna infrared sauna expert on the show and i um one of the things that's that she enlightened me to was the fact that when you come out of an infrared sauna, your skin is really open. So whatever you put on your skin at that moment is going to be absorbed in. So like we have some probiotic lotions that we recommend. So I don't know what you think of like using that moment after an infrared sauna for, okay, now what can I get into my skin because everything's so open? you know, that's a cool idea and I'm going to flip it upside down and tell you a story that's interesting and kind of sort of answers a question from before. I think the people who listen to

our podcast, Mindy are like health savvy people and that you may, they may not have this issue. But I've got to tell you this story that I think is kind of interesting. One time I'd run this toxic burden panel, which was like not really that insightful on a client. And I remember talking to the rep who I, who was a colleague and a friend. I said, I said, Mary Beth, tell me about one of the worst one of these you've ever seen. I want to hear a story on where this fits on the Richter scale of severity. And she said the worst test I've ever seen of this toxic burden and like all of these chemicals was a teenage influencer who got all kinds of personal care products from the

internet for free and she was using them all. And I was like, what a cool story. Please tell that more often. So here I am telling that story. And my point is, I think this just goes back to like keep it, keep it clean quote unquote, right? Like keep it simple. take a shower.

Don't soap your body all up. Just wash that sweat off. Towel the sweat off. Shower it off. Afterwards. After you get out of the shower. After you get out of the sauna. Right.

And then throw away the crap in your closet that sucks. Yeah. And that actually was, to your health influencer point, that was actually one of the things that this sauna company told me is they're like, what people do is they get in the sauna. They shower. And then they put their toxic beauty product. right on top. And what they don't realize is that everything's so open that all of those endocrine disruptors are going into the body. So this is beyond just eczema. So, but I keep in, there's been a very interesting thread throughout our podcast of a lot of people using infrared

sauna as a tool for healing. And so I just, it's becoming more popular. And I just want to make sure people are after it is important. Yeah. No, it's all the sneaky thing. right Mindy so okay this every year we have a different theme for our podcast and this year I wanted to do something on self-love and I wanted to do something on us all highlighting our superpowers because I feel like you know especially as women we have a tendency to kind of oh you know we kind of put our put what we're really good at we don't really emphasize it so here are my questions to you one do you have a self-love practice like a nurturing things you do on a daily basis to nurture yourself and two what do you think some of your superpowers are that you bring to the world. Yeah. This question, I think there's a lot of

things we could say here. One answer I'd like to give that's the same answer I would give if someone says, how do you know if you're successful? I go to bed and get up early, right? And I also drink electricics every single morning. I never skip that. So I always have electrolytes because we always need more minerals. So those are, those are practices for me that are like are really nourishing and grounding. And if I can give myself five minutes, three minutes, one hour is awesome in the morning by myself, I always feel better. I like to be more proactive. The other one was superpowers.

I love to collect and connect the dots. So that's what people. And I love common denominators. And that's really where like a lot of this conversation even came out of today is like, this person's same. You know, let me tell you like a weird thing. I have people that have like an itch at the bottom of their hairline or scalp right

year. It seems like all of the people that are like, it's really irritating right there. They all have like, to moderate mycotoxin so far. It's just, right? I could go off on some other, like, random weird ones, but, like, I love that. I love to look at, like, what is a common denominator, and how are we all so much more similar than we are different? Yeah. Yeah. You know, health is so fascinating, you know, I always call it a puzzle. Like, it's just there's so much to learn about

your body. There's so many different ways now to look at symptoms, and the world is really starting to open up to that. So, Krista, this was awesome. Thank you. so much information. So where just if somebody wants to follow you or find you, what's the best place for them to go to? Yeah. If you're listening to this podcast, then my podcast is called the less stressed life, which is a really funny thing. I was just trying to use a synonym for inflammation, but it didn't really matter. We talk about actually the the crux is that we go over health from all of those three angles, whether it's structural, our external, emotional, and nutritional. All of those things are fair game. So that's where you can find me. And then you'll have a link.

And if I've got anything, it's at my website, Krista Bigler.com and then forward slash links. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.