Acne: Root Causes and Solutions
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Christa Elza: [00:00:00] Our skin is kind of the first line of defense, but it's our last line of detoxification.
Keep that in mind, right? We, it's taking in and it's our barrier, but our insides an inside job for the detoxification. So if we're starting to see things come out of the skin, that means our detoxification process is inside. There's something going on, there's an over. Abundance of a certain hormone or toxins, something is going on there.
Mm. So keep that in mind because when you stop trying to kinda silence it you need to stop and ask like, well, what's actually driving this? Because if it's in your skin, you're also going to see downstream effects in terms of your energy, your mood. And your confidence, yes, because you don't feel great in your skin, but also there's something else going on your internal environment that can affect your mood as well, and that that just affects your whole life.
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Sheree Beaumont: Welcome back to another episode of The Wild and Wild Collective. We are here for part three in our skin series. I have really enjoyed this and I know that you guys have to have been loving the messages that you guys have been getting and sharing about the breakthroughs that you've been having. And today we're gonna dive into one that is so bothersome.
It sucked as a teenager, and it sucks even more as an adult. They are talking about. Acne. Now how Acne, just like teenage acne isn't random, but. I think it's even more infuriating. You know, it's kind of something that you learn to accept, or like me took everything under the sun to try and get rid of it.
When you were in your youth, now it's kinda like, ah, I know the damage that antibiotics can cause. If I'm on that for three months trying to get rid of this, or I know the damage that the Iraqi tank can cause, or whatever the name of it [00:02:00] is now. Like there's so many different things that are out there. Or I know I shouldn't be scrubbing my face like I did when I was a kid or trying to take on the makeup man.
The amount of. Sealer I went through as a teenage girl was crazy, but. This is something that's so real, you know? And it always seems to show up at the worst possible time. The big meeting, the date night, like the time, you're finally feeling confident and you know, I remember, I think I hit 27 and it was just like this thing across my friend group and we were all going, what the heck is it?
It's like my skin has just completely changed and evolved, and suddenly I've got all these breakouts here. And the thing is, we wanna dive into what. The deeper issue was, and I'll share a little bit about what I ended up finding out was driving mine. But it's really about understanding that when you start listening and stop fighting, what's like going on and understanding.
We've talked about the root cause in part one, but we're really diving deep here into the acne space. We're gonna decode what your skin's actually saying. Where, why are you getting these breakouts? [00:03:00]
Christa Elza: Yeah. I think it's, first of all, you've got to acknowledge that acne is inflammation. Mm-hmm. Period. And inflammation is just a message.
It's communication. Something is not right, right? There's something amiss. There's something that's driving, that's happening because it wants to. So every breakout is your immune system responding to something it perceives as a threat. So keep that in mind. And you wanna think about your pores as tiny little communication channels between inner and outer, right?
Like our skin is, we've mentioned before, your skin is a sponge. Mm-hmm. We use medications, you know, you have transdermal medications that you put in a patch, right? Because our skin absorbs so we, you know, our skin is actually influenced by the external environment. It's also very much influenced by hormones.
Our immunity, our immune cells and bacteria that live on our skin also can play a role in that. So when any of that becomes imbalanced, and even from your gut microbiome, which we've talked about tons or your liver is overburdened [00:04:00] with toxins, with alcohol, with processed foods, with hormones, a lot of times we will have then this popping up in our skin.
So. It's multi-systemic usually. And we want to always address the gut because the gut teaches the immune system how to respond, right? And the gut is also the portal into either healing or inflammation, depending on the integrity of that gut microbiome and the type of bacteria that are growing in our gut.
We should, we will always have the good guys in the bad diet, guys in our gut, but we wanna have more good guys at the party that aren't like breaking windows than the bad guys that are causing destruction in our gut, right? So we wanna have a good balance there. We always need to address the liver because the liver processes, hormones, processes our toxins.
We always wanna support our liver through nutrition, hydration and supplementation. And then the endocrine system, which really is the head of the table when it comes to giving directions with hormones. And that can [00:05:00] orchestrate all of our oil production in our skin. Stress and then repair signals, right?
So when any of those systems between the gut, the liver, and the endocrine system is kind of out of whack, then you know, inflammation is kind of come out and we're gonna see it in the skin. So there is a research article that we had found from 2024 in scientific reports that should, specific gut microbiomes directly influences skin inflammation pathways.
And another found that women with acne had markedly lower diversity in their gut. I looked at a lot. I've looked at a lot of GI maps which is a stool test that I run, which kinda shows us the breakdown. And it was really interesting. I saw this woman's GI map, honestly. She was like, honestly, I don't eat good. I drink soda every day at work. Really? No fruits and vegetables, nothing. I had never seen a more blank GI map. It was very crazy. There was zero diversity in her gut microbiome. And that's not good either, like we have to have. A variety of [00:06:00] gut microbes in there to really regulate our immune system.
Right? So it's important to have a variety of diet. But the science only confirms what we already know intuitively. That when we're stressed, when we're constipated, when we're inflamed, when we're not getting good sleep, we will see it in our skin.
Sheree Beaumont: Mm-hmm. And to, you know, kind of. Piggyback off what you've said.
There's this really strong connection between the gut, the liver, and the hormones, and. It really does start, I think a lot of people go straight to the small intestine, right? When we think about the gut health. But when we actually think about where digestion starts, it starts in your mouth, right?
Mooning up one set of teeth to really chew things, and that chewing tends to activate the system to let our body know that there's food coming in. It actually secretes digestive enzymes in the mouth, and then it goes down into the stomach. Now this is normally. We dunno if we chew our food enough, but two, one of the other issues that we find is that we are not having enough stomach acid.
Now, this can be suppressed through [00:07:00] medication. This might be through a zinc deficiency, which is one of the most common causes. You know, one little thing and a hack that I love to share. If you don't get your nails done, run your finger across the top of your nail bed. And if you've got like the ridges or the kind of like lines up and down your nails, that's a telltale sign.
You're not producing enough stomach acid, AKA go and get some zinc. Because the zinc is what helps your body produce that stomach acid. And so I. If you've got low stomach acid, you're then allowing those unhealthy, like those bad bugs to kind of come through a lot more. Also, side note, if your body is deficient in zinc, that is often a major reason why the acne and stuff can flare.
Because the zinc is zinc deficiency is so deeply tied to hormonal acne, not just hormonal acne, just acne in general. And so it was one, it's one of the things that I cross. Look for in blood work, if their zinc is deficient or if their ALK phosphatase isn't high enough, then often that they are actually gonna have the acne or the breakouts or even things like the eczema and psoriasis because they're low in [00:08:00] zinc.
So, sorry, little side note, but essentially when it comes to the gut, we need to make sure you've got a balanced microbiome. We need to make sure that you are nourishing your body with diversity like you mentioned, but also because this is where most of your immune system lives, and that's what sounds the alarm.
And this is where the inflammation can start to kind of set off that, that snowball effect and end up. Causing havoc in the skin. You know, the next thing, like you mentioned is the liver, which is your filtration system. And again, it's so mind boggling to me, but it's how we've been trained as a society is to understand that the liver is just primarily there to help you filter alcohol.
A lot of people go, no, my liver can't be blocked or My detox pathways must be fine. I don't drink all that much. And I'm like, it is so much more than with your drinking. I've got so many clients and I know that you'd be the same clients that don't even drink, and their liver pathways are massively congested.
And this can be from hormonal issues. This can be from the amount of toxins we are pushing on our skin like we've talked about. But [00:09:00] essentially the liver's job is to break down these. Old hormones, it's to break down the environmental toxins that come in the alcohol. Yes, that's one component, but also your metabolic waste.
And so when it's overwhelmed from these processed foods, from the stress, from the synthetic hormones, maybe you're taking synthetic hormones as part of, you know, trying to balance them, that those compounds are gonna recirculate. If the liver pathway isn't detoxification, pathways aren't working. And so one of the byproducts or the estrogen breakdown products is.
Particularly inflammatory when it lingers for too long. And so this is where a lot of women will come in and they go, why do I get all this hormonal acne like around my chin, right? Mm-hmm. And so it's not necessarily because you've got high estrogen, it's because your body isn't able to clear it out through one of the three phases of detoxification.
Either the first two were being the liver or the third one being in the gut. And so. Things like high insulin from sugar, high levels of sugar or skipped meals, drives the [00:10:00] androgen production, which thickens the skin and can ramp up the oil. It's not just this estrogen pitcher. It can be cortisol, which is your stress hormone, so that's gonna slow the healing, raising the inflammation as well.
Or if your progesterone's low that that. Really calming and anti-inflammatory. And so without that, it's gonna throw things off balance and off kilter. So we're not only looking at can we get rid of the old hormones or are they being recycled, but are we bringing the other hormones into balance so that we are not having those breakouts to begin with?
Christa Elza: Yeah. I think too, I mean there's other underlying things that kind of. That maybe we don't pay attention to that fuels that inflammation day to day. Blood sugar chaos for one thing. So we wanna pay attention to blood sugar spikes. So this is where a continuous glucose monitor can be really helpful.
Mm-hmm. It tells you in real time what's actually elevating blood sugar. And our goal every time we eat it, is going to elevate our blood sugar, but what we wanna avoid is those big. Spikes in blood sugar. We wanna kind of have 'em be little molehill, [00:11:00] not big mountains, not big spikes, up, up and down. So if you're drinking coffee on an empty stomach, you're eating a lot of refined carbs, especially without pairing it with like a fat or a protein that's gonna kind of blunt that sugar response.
You are driving inflammation every single time that happens. And so over time. That hormonal rollercoaster can be mirrored in your skin health. So even if you think you're eating healthy, if you're eating fruit without any kind of a protein to kind of ground it, your blood sugar will spike higher without pairing it with like a yogurt or a cottage cheese or some kind of a protein that's gonna help blunt some of that.
So. That's important to pay attention to. And then secondly, I think people don't understand the importance of stress management. And you know, people say, oh, my perception of stress, I ask them and they'll say, no. I mean, I'm busy all the time, but, and that's just because they're used to that level of stress.
But if you, mm-hmm.
Sheree Beaumont: If
Christa Elza: you're not in rest and relaxation, if you are not just chilling at the beach in that vibe, you are in fight or flight, you're either in one or [00:12:00] the other. So check in with yourself. Are you running on deadlines? Do you have a tendency to perfectionism? Do you have a lot of to-do lists every single day?
You're aggravated with traffic. Your body cannot prioritize that digestion, the repair. And so when you're chronically in that, whether or not that's your norm, that's not what I'm asking you. I'm asking you, are you in rest and relaxation? I feel like I'm chilling at the beach, or are you not? Because it's one or the other.
So start to pay attention to that because that does play a huge role in some of the. In acne and then beyond autoimmune, you know, eczema, psoriasis, et cetera, in the skin. And then, you know, we've talked about gut multiple times, but you know, to be clear on what constipation is, if you're not having like number one bowel movement every single day, if you're not having a complete bowel movement where you feel like, yes, that was amazing.
Then it's probably a good solution. Like those tiny little poop that has nowhere near the amount of bulk of what you ate and you know it, right? So you've gotta be honest with [00:13:00] yourself on your digestion and level of constipation. Because the thing is, if you have that gut stagnation and a lot of people on GLP ones too, your gut is gonna be slowed down and that you can start to see.
Acne flares, et cetera. And that's why, because you're just not getting rid of the toxins, the the breakdown of hormones, right? You have to have a good exit somewhere, and you don't want it to come through your skin. You want it to come where it's supposed to come from. So these are just, you know, things I want to point out that might be kind of under the radar and you might be like, I don't know, this is just my daily routine.
But they're actually hidden drivers to what you're not wanting, which is skin flareups, right?
Sheree Beaumont: Mm-hmm. And you know, just to your point about the stress, like to, you know, I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, one of the things that a lot of my friends and I went through were like, what the heck?
27? Why is this happening? And it was, you know, it was actually more specifically around the time of COVID. [00:14:00] So, oh yeah. Most of my friends were all the same age, so it was why the 27 I, we all thought it was something to do with like the skin turnover. You know, your body replaces itself every seven years.
We literally went down massive rabbit holes and we're trying everything. But that was a really, really stressful time for a lot of people and. It was the cortisol picture, it was massive. The other side of it was the zinc. I actually went and looked at my skin and now I know whenever I start to get a little bit of a flare up, and again, stress is gonna deplete the zinc too.
You've gotta remember that it's gonna take more from your immune system. Zincs important for your immune system, so on and so forth. Right. And so I know to just boost it up and one of the other things that's really, really important to mention, like I have the copper IUD as part of a, you know. What's it called?
Contraceptive method. I was looking for the word there, but then the copper repels the zinc in the sperm. It also then can repel the zinc in the body. And so if you ask someone that has got the copper IUD, there are some side effects. I choose to have it 'cause it's non-hormonal, but I take even more zinc than the daily recommended [00:15:00] dose.
And to be honest, the daily recommended dose is absolute. Crap. If you ask me 15 milligrams a day is nowhere near enough of what we actually need in our bodies. And so if you're someone that is just starting out with, you know, and you're like, damn, is my acne like driven by a nutrient deficiency? Well, why don't we look at your, your nutrient statuses.
Let's have a look at your zinc status and see if that could be one of the things that's driving it. Or are you on birth control? And whilst we can go on birth control to help with acne, that's the whole reason I went on it at 14 years old. It can be depleting your zinc. And so it was like I got to the point where I had done antibiotics for three months.
I had then gone on birth control and that had settled things down a little bit. But then my skin kept breaking out. I can constantly still breaking through 'cause I wasn't taking zinc, which is one of the things that gets depleted. And then I was on tane at the same time. So it's like my poor liver was just in this complete overload.
My gut was being absolutely destroyed and. You know, I was still getting the acne. I was like, this doesn't make any [00:16:00] sense. So when it comes to healing the acne, it's not about restriction. It's not about punishment. Yes, the medications can have their place, but ultimately if you heal it from the inside out, doing things like nourishing your gut health, we've talked about all the ways you can do that.
We balancing your plate, getting enough protein, fiber in a lot of colors and good fats to optimize, you know, your. Anti-inflammatory responses, keeping your blood sugars balanced. Like Chris talked about, getting enough fiber, which we know also helps reduce those fine lines and wrinkles. And the skin elasticity.
All of this really does support your body. So I think those are really, really important things to, to note and, and make sure that you are getting in on a regular basis. Mm-hmm.
Christa Elza: For sure. I mean, I think that simplifying skincare too, like barrier support moisturizers you want to include, look for ones that have ceramides in them, niacinamide in them.
You wanna use gentle cleansers. So don't do the harsh stripping that that's also going to play a role. So there are some topical things that we want to have, you know, making sure that you're [00:17:00] protecting your skin, not punishing your skin with harsh chemicals on it. And then, you know, I think the bottom line is understand that your skin is.
Really your first line of defense, it is always fighting for you. It's not fighting against you, even though it can really feel like your body has turned its back on you. You're just, there's signals there. There is some kind of a root cause there, and I think that, you know, in the integrative approach we may try pharmaceuticals to help again.
Sometimes that can help with. Simmering down a big, huge flare. Mm-hmm. But you've got to address these underlying issues. Otherwise you will have downstream effects and side effects from that choice, and you're not really solving the problem. Right. You know, our skin is kind of the first line of defense, but it's our last line of detoxification.
Keep that in mind, right? We, it's taking in and it's our barrier, but then we, our insides an inside job for the detoxification. So if we're starting to see things come out of the skin, that [00:18:00] means our detoxification process is inside. There's something going on, there's an over. Abundance of a certain hormone or toxins, something is going on there.
Mm. So keep that in mind because when you stop trying to kinda silence it and just, you know, and, but you need to stop and ask like, well, what's actually driving this? Because if it's in your skin, you're also going to see downstream effects in terms of your energy, your mood. And your confidence, yes, because you don't feel great in your skin, but also there's something else going on your internal environment that can affect your mood as well, and that that just affects your whole life.
So instead of chasing like the clear skin, you want to really chase a clear signal, a clear cause of like, what is this that's going on? Right.
Sheree Beaumont: A hundred percent. And so it's like, remember, like acne isn't a floor, it's feedback. I always love to ask no matter what symptom you're getting, and we do that here, right?
Empowered health is your superpower. Understanding what is my body trying to tell me? Because when you're learning [00:19:00] that this is the language that your body is speaking, it's actually gonna give you permission to heal. So we hope you've enjoyed our skin series. If you have other skin questions, pop 'em through.
We love hearing from you and we hope you have a beautiful rest of your day. we
Christa Elza: will see you next time.
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Speaker 5: We'll see you again for another episode of the Wild and Wild Collective.
