How to manage your eczema with Carolyn Akinyemi

Introduction

On episode 661 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we meet Carolyn Akinyemi and discuss her book, Eczema Decoded.

Episode Notes

Hello Section

[00:01:20.630] – Allan

Hello, Raz. How are you?

[00:01:22.580] – Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:01:24.740] – Allan

I'm doing pretty good. Doing pretty good. Good. Looking at my scheduling, I like to schedule out my quarters and say, Okay, what is this quarter going to look like? From the perspective of personal and business, and made the decision that I'm going to spend a lot more time not working this quarter than I normally would. That's interesting. I've got my clients, I've got my businesses. They're all coming along doing fine. In fact, this week, we've got these vets in. They literally took up, I think, all of our rooms. Oh, wow. They're here for a whole week. It was just a good group they're in. Tammy was able to leave and go do her ta-ta trip with her friends. They're doing the ta-ta trip. Again, if you haven't had yourself checked, go This is just a reminder. We're coming into October, Breast Awareness. A hundred %. Everybody's obviously aware of breast, but you got to be aware of breast cancer. So if you're not getting yourself… Having gotten yourself checked, go ahead and book your appointment because That's what October is supposed to tell you to do. All the little pink ribbons have a purpose. That's right.

[00:02:34.620] – Allan

Okay, so go to your Tata trip, even though I know it's not that most pleasant of things, but they make an annual event of it, and they all go out and hang out in a beautiful town called Bocete. So you don't have to go anywhere if you don't need to, if it's done there. But by all means, make sure you get yourself checked.

[00:02:53.690] – Rachel

Oh, absolutely. That's a perfect reminder.

[00:02:56.530] – Allan

All right. So you're ready to talk about eczema?

[00:02:59.400] – Rachel

Sure.

Interview
[00:03:29.950] – Allan

Carolyn, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:03:32.930] – Carolyn

Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.

[00:03:35.430] – Allan

So today we're going to talk about your book, Eczema Decoded. And the reason I wanted to look into this is I don't have any experience with it. My wife doesn't have it, and her kids… She said her daughter had it for a while when she was younger, but it doesn't really seem to show any symptoms now or any flare-ups now, but has had it. So I don't have really any real experience with it. But the reason I'm asked you to be is I do have a client who's struggling with this. He's in his 40, 50s. I think he just, yeah, he's just around 50 years old. And so he's still struggling with this. So that's one of the reasons why I wanted to dive into it is realizing, yeah, it's not just a kid's disease. It's something that can happen as you get over for it, like it did for you. And so that's part of the reason. But I appreciate the book. It wasn't like… Because here's a lot of times what will happen is there'll be a book on something and they're like, okay, well, you're going to use this and you're going to use this and then you use this.

[00:04:31.270] – Allan

And it's more of just this, here's a list of things to do. But you took the time to explain why our body worked this way, and therefore, why this would be a part of a solution because it's not just one thing. If you do this, then that. It doesn't quite work like that. So I appreciate that you took the time to go through it and that you tied back to a lot of science behind this to help people really understand why we would be doing these things and therefore feel much more comfortable and confident to do this, particularly if they were doing it with their child.

[00:05:10.810] – Carolyn

Yeah. And that's part of empowering people because it's very easy if somebody's just telling you, do this, do that, anytime it comes back or you have a different query, you've got to keep going back to them and you become dependent on that person for your answers. So for me, I was always one of those annoying children that constantly asked, why? Why? Why? Why? So when I had four children in close succession, my eldest was still four when I gave birth to my fourth, and every one of them developed eczema. I had done everything right on paper. I had a natural birth. I had breastfed each of them for a year. We ate healthily. It didn't make sense. So my childhood why instinct just kicked in. I didn't have a medical background, so I had to search everything from the ground up and find out. And it led me on a very deep rabbit hole because I found I was looking at eczema from all different types of medical fields and mapping it, doing a mind map. When you are learning something new, your brain needs something to relate it to. And when it doesn't have something and you create a mind map, you're giving your mind the buckets to put it into so that it can retain it.

[00:06:28.440] – Carolyn

But as I'm doing that, I'm thinking, Oh, that It actually feeds into this one. Oh, and that's causing that. Oh, that's going back around to this. Oh, my gosh, look at all these loop systems that we've got. I managed to map what was going on inside of the extra patients. The second thing is when I raise my children, I've always tried to raise my children to understand why I tell them to do what they do. Because I think if we teach our children to own something, they're more likely to do it. They're more likely to keep to it. So that's the same philosophy I took with this is if I explain the why and people understand the why, they're more likely to own it. They're more likely to say, Okay, yeah, I can see why I need to do that.

[00:07:08.680] – Allan

Yeah. Adults are like that, too.

[00:07:11.460] – Carolyn

We all are. I am the same. Yeah.

[00:07:15.800] – Allan

Okay. Now, one of the things that you said in the book that I think was really interesting, because I've seen the same thing in other ailments where it seems like the solution, they want to go to one body part. They want to say, Okay, this This is a stomach issue, so therefore, we're just going to look at this. And then as we get smarter, they start noticing, Well, there's other things, but we don't want to talk about those because the medications don't necessarily do that. But in the book, You said eczema is not actually a disease, it's a label. Could you explain what you mean by that?

[00:07:52.050] – Carolyn

To me, a diagnosis, and if you looked up in the dictionary, a diagnosis is when you go to someone and they actually tell you what's gone wrong. If you go to a doctor with a rash, as you said, like with any other medical condition as well, they will look at the symptoms and they will see what that description fits. And then they say, It looks like you've got this. You've got a label. Nobody has actually assessed, why did you get that? If a diagnosis is, Why did you get this? If we know why, we can put it right. Then nobody's getting diagnosed with We're just being labeled. Because once you have a label, then we can prescribe medicines that go with that label to treat it. Like you said, we're treating the body as different parts. We've chopped everything up. That's dermatology, that's osteopathic, and this is psychology. Whereas everything is so interlinked. We are one whole person. What happens is if you have multiple symptoms, you're either going to get sent to lots of different specialists who don't talk to each other, or you're going to get given medications which often have side effects, which then send you to another specialist.

[00:09:06.690] – Carolyn

So it becomes a bit of a vortex.

[00:09:11.530] – Allan

Right. Now, one of the interesting things, and again, like I said, I just appreciate that you took the time to go through to do a lot of explaining why this stuff goes the way it goes. But between the exematous skin, this is the skin that is going through a flare up, and healthy skin, there are some significant differences in those two scans. And understanding, I think understanding those differences helps us go a long way to understanding why we have the symptoms, other symptoms that we have, the other problems we have. Could you take a few minutes to go through what the five differences are between those two?

[00:09:48.280] – Carolyn

Yes, certainly. So one of the first ones that I learned about was a deficiency in a protein called Chlodium-1, and that's responsible for making your skin cells locked together. So a bit like when you build a brick wall, you're not going to build all the bricks in rows like this because you're not going to have a stable wall. Those bricks need to be… I don't know what you're looking at. With your skin cells, they also need a way to lock together to make a firm external barrier. It's the Claudine-1 protein that makes the junctions that can cause them to fit together. There's a deficiency in that protein. The actual structural barrier is not so strong as it should be. There's also a deficiency in another amino acid called histidine. Histidine carries the water from your body up through all the layers of the skin. If you have a deficiency in histidine, then you're not carrying enough water in your skin, so your skin just tends to be drier than most people anyway. So you've got a double whammy there. I think clourdine one as well. It also helps to regulate the water loss from the top.

[00:10:57.910] – Carolyn

If you've got both, clourdine one deficiency and histidine deficiency, you're not carrying up enough water, and you're also not regulating how much water is lost from the surface. That's often one of the first things that happens before people break into the rash is having extremely dry skin. It feels like it's cracking before you even get the rash. Then the third one is the natural moisturizing factor. We all have this natural moisturizing factor in our skin. That's your oils, your waterproof cover. There's a lot of antibacterial protection in that as well. There's a deficiency in that. That also means if you have lower friendly microbes on your skin, they're not going to regulate the numbers of pathogenic bacteria that are on your skin. Certain microbes like Staphylococcal, they can cause infections when they're overpopulated on the skin. That's one of the most common infections with eczema skin is staph infections. The fourth one we had was another thing that causes the inefficient outer layer is it's collapsing. The skin cells have to move up. They're round, nice, plump, full of things. They go to the top of the skin. Then there's an action that happens and it collapses.

[00:12:12.590] – Carolyn

It makes these hard, flat skin cells on the surface. There's a problem with eczema skin where it's collapsing too soon. That is also affecting the structural barrier of the skin. Then the other one is deficiencies in other skin proteins as well. You've got things like collagen which is the structural protein, like the scaffolding of your skin that can be low. Keratin, that helps you to make tough skin cells on the outside. Then you've got other things like Arganine and glutamine, which also help you make the natural moisturizing factor. All of those are seen to be low in people with eczema.

[00:12:47.400] – Allan

Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the natural moisturizing factor, because I think most of us know there's an ecosystem living on our skin. Okay, and we think of our skin as being a barrier to bad things. So it's a one, two punch that we would have for our immune system if we have the healthy microbes in a good environment and we have skin It's not letting bad stuff in. You basically have the soldiers lined up in front of the wall, and only now we have a wall with gaps and we don't have the soldiers.

[00:13:27.910] – Carolyn

We don't have the soldiers. Yeah, that's right.

[00:13:29.420] – Allan

Can you talk Think about that lack of moisturization factor and maybe a little bit about what someone can do to address that.

[00:13:37.100] – Carolyn

Yeah, so there's natural things that you can use rather than the petroleum-based moisturizers. The problem with them is if you put something on your skin that is, Okay, I'm going to create an artificial barrier on my skin and something oily that's going to replace the natural moisturization factor. But if it's chemical-based and especially petroleum-based, It can block your pores and then stop your sweat from evaporating. That can cause an additional problem because you're still going to sweat, but your sweat can't come out. That then leaches into the surrounding tissue. Then people with eczema, a lot of people have developed allergies to their own sweat, which then causes eczema-type rashes. Then you have another issue going on. Just as you said, with the bacteria that's on our skin, we are so used to seeing bacteria as frightening. It's like, Oh, no, we have to use antibacterial hand washes. And if I've got eczema, I'm going to need to use antibacterial washes. But it's like nuking a terrain, and you're killing the civilians as well as killing those that you perceive as enemies. We don't need to get rid of all the bacteria. We need to have a balance.

[00:14:52.250] – Carolyn

We need to have a correct ecosystem. And so I tell people to use natural things like shea butter, another is mango butter, cocoa butter. These ones are very natural. When they're unrefined and unprocessed, they have a lot of skin-feeding nutrients in them, vitamin A, vitamin E, all these things that are in their essential fats. Then you can use essential oils, which have been shown to reduce things like staph, but not harm the friendly bacteria that's on your skin. So tea tree is very good. You could get sheer butter, put a couple of drops of tea tree in there, but that's not good if you have pets, because dogs, particularly, they can't be around tea tree. That's very dangerous for them. So then if you've got pets, you could use something like Manuka Honey oil. That's a very powerful oil against staff. They even outperform tea tree in some trials. So you can just get a natural moisturizing cream that's very thick, very nice. If it's too thick, if you live in a cold climate, like when I was in the UK, it would be solid. I'd be scraping it trying to get it out the pot.

[00:15:55.060] – Carolyn

I would warm it and mix it with something liquid like olive oil or coconut oil. And then I would have a softer version because when you have soft skin, you don't want to be pulling it while you're trying to rub it. You want to be able to pat it on and smooth it on. But yeah, the natural moisturizer and essential oils works wonderfully.

[00:16:12.620] – Allan

Excellent. So now you talked a little bit about histidine and the other amino acids, but you talked about deficiencies. Now, if someone thinks, well, I'm eating plenty of meat and other proteins, so I should have all of this, how do we end up with those deficiencies?

[00:16:34.610] – Carolyn

Because there's a common misconception that we are what we eat. And I say, no, we're not. We are what we absorb. And if you have any chronic disease, the chances are you have gut issues. Whether you have a leaky gut that's contributing to inflammation in your body, or you have enzyme deficiencies, or you have lower levels of stomach acid. And interestingly enough, having a deficiency in history histidine or it's also linked to having low stomach acid. You need histidine for that as well. Then if you have low stomach acid, that has a whole knock-on effect. You're not going to digest your food properly, you're not going to sterilize your food properly. When you eat your food, it goes into your stomach, the acid should sterilize it before it passes into the small intestine or further down. If it doesn't, you're allowing bacteria to go there that shouldn't be there. Then if you're deficient in the enzymes, you're not going to break your food down and it. We could be eating all the right foods, but if we have different issues going on that could impact our digestion, we're not absorbing it, it's going out the other side.

[00:17:42.590] – Carolyn

Even stress is a big impact on that. Stress is like, if you're going through a highly stressed event or even you're used to running on stress, some people are just used to running on high cortisol, your body will turn off or turn down all of the non-essential financial functions of your body. If you are running from a bear, you don't need to stop and eat berries while you're running. You just need to get away. And so digestion is not a very important function when you're in a high stress situation. So your digestion can be affected. You can end up with nutritional deficiencies just because you're living in a stress environment or stress state.

[00:18:24.000] – Allan

Okay. And now, one that surprised me is that you got into the water that comes in our house that is treated with chlorine or it could be hard water. I know I've lived in environments where the hard water, and you can tell because you get your soap and you almost can't get it to lather properly.

[00:18:42.940] – Carolyn

You can't get it to lather, yeah, that's right.

[00:18:44.930] – Allan

Tell us what's wrong with hard water, with chlorinated water, and what we can do to resolve some of that.

[00:18:52.430] – Carolyn

Okay, well, those are two different issues. The chlorine, I'll touch on that one first because we spoke about the different bacteria that live on your skin. The chlorine is added to the water to disinfect it. It's like an antibiotic. It kills living organisms that would be in the water. But you have living organisms on your skin. When you then If you're then bathing in chlorinated water, that can also affect your friendly microbes on your skin. If you have eczema, you're already out of balance on your skin. You tend to have lower levels of those microbes anyway. That's why I recommend getting a chlorine filter. And they're not expensive. If you can get a whole house filter, great. But we had a chlorine filter, and they're so easy to use. You just take the shower cap off, put the filter on, and put the shower head back on. And then I would fill up the bath from that for the children. I would just take the shower down, fill up the bath from that. And then you have water that doesn't have the chlorine in. Then the second thing you were saying about the water was the hard water.

[00:19:53.550] – Carolyn

The water travels through the ground, and it will pick up different minerals depending on what ground travels through. So places where there's very high levels of magnesium, say limestone areas, the water has very high amounts of these minerals that sap the moisture out of the skin. So places like London, Very hard water. I think the worst place I've ever visited is Prescott in Arizona. I literally felt like my skin was going to crack and break open every time I had baked. That was terrible, yes. When I had the water softener fitted, It made such a profound difference to my children's skin. I knew if it stopped working, if it needed a service, or if I'd forgotten to load the salt, it would show on my children's skin within two days. Their skin would deteriorate quite rapidly. So it made a huge difference.

[00:20:48.050] – Allan

Now, we talked about the microbiome that's on our skin, and you went in a little bit into leaky gut. But why is our gut microbiome important relative to this eczema?

[00:21:02.250] – Carolyn

To eczema? Well, it's almost… You have to ask yourself, what does your microbiome not do? It just seems to do everything. It's responsible for so many things. There's a direct connection between your gut and your brain. So if your microbes are out of sync, then you can have very high levels of anxiety, you can have depression. And as we said before, that could It could be labeled as a psychological issue. It could actually be your gut that's causing that. If you are having stress and anxiety, that's going to impact your digestion and your absorption of food because you're going to have higher levels of cortisol. This is where we get these loop systems coming. Ladies can develop eczema later in life when their hormones drop as they're approaching menopause. The microbes in your gut can take over the production or to support the production of estrogen as the levels decline from the ovaries. If you don't have the microbes there to do that, then you're more at risk of developing dry skin and a lot of other menopausal symptoms like hot flashes or hot flushes and things like that as well. So, yeah, they do that.

[00:22:18.070] – Carolyn

They break down your food. They break down toxins, and help us to eliminate them. And there's a lot of toxins that are known to impact eczema and increase the severity. So that's a whole deep issue of why we need to look after the gut. It's not just eczema. Every chronic disease, you have to assess the gut.

[00:22:40.300] – Allan

Okay. Now, I don't want anyone to stress out because that's one of the seven. But as we get into what is causing the biggest problem with our microbiome, you identified seven pillars. Could you go through them? Because I think as you go through this, this is where it goes, oh, oh, ah. Because this is our life. You're literally just… It's going to feel like it's everything. So you go through the seven. But again, don't stress, don't stress. You can do little things. They're going to go a long way, but can you tell us about the seven?

[00:23:17.650] – Carolyn

Okay, well, the first one and the most obvious one is antibiotics. A lot of people realize that antibiotics decimate the landscape of your gut. What they don't realize is the preservatives in food can be considered antibiotics as well because they are there to destroy the bacteria and the organisms that would cause the food to spoil. But your gut microbes use the same pathways as those organisms as well. So when we're eating things that are laden with preservatives, they act like antibiotics in our gut. So they can affect the microbes in our gut as well. We have C-sections and bottle Fetal feeding, which I alluded to when I said, I did everything right. Why did my kids get eczema? With the natural birth, as the baby comes through the birth canal, it is covered with all the gunk and the mucus as it comes through. But that is laden with friendly microbes. In the last three weeks of a lady's pregnancy, the microbes in the birth canal change to become the ideal environment for that infant to pass through and to pick up their first immune system. So it's up their nose, it's in their mouth, it's all over their skin.

[00:24:34.990] – Carolyn

And that's a wonderful thing to happen. But if there's a C-section, the baby hasn't had that. And we can take the baby and then they tend to be put straight on the scouts. What does the baby weigh? And then they're not picking up the microbes. We should have this friendly microbes all over our skin. When a baby is born, it comes through the birth canal, and then it should have skin-to-skin contact. And then it It takes up more friendly microbes from the mother. But if the baby is born and then just put into the hospital equipment, particularly if they haven't had a vaginal birth, that baby has a far higher risk of developing atopic diseases. They even have a higher risk of having damage from the shots that they would have because they don't have the microbes to help them deal with those issues. Then bottle feeding as well and breastfeeding. There's so many friendly microbes, prebiotics in breast milk that would help that infant's gut to be established. We can set our children up for Having a higher risk of developing all sorts of atopic diseases, and that's including asthma as well, when we don't or can't have C-section and bottle feed instead of breast feed.

[00:25:56.750] – Carolyn

But that can be manipulated. Scientists that actually discovered they could accurately predict which infants would go on to develop atopic diseases by assessing their stall samples and the microbes that were in it. Even more powerful than that, they said they could manipulate it to stop them from getting it. If you've had to have a C-section or you couldn't breastfeed, you can really help your child by giving them infant probiotics to manipulate their gut. Then we had another one was the non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs. These are very damaging to the gut as well. They can really affect the health of your gut. And not only the microbes, but injuries, actual sores in the gut, stomach ulcers, bleeding, that thing can happen from having all these painkillers. Pesticides. All the pesticides that are sprayed on the food, when they were assessed, apparently, they assessed these on human cells and said, Oh, they don't have an effect on human cells, so they're safe. But Nobody tested them on the microbes in your gut. The microbes in our guts use the same bacterial pathways as the pests do. They act as an antibiotic when we eat them. If we're eating glyphosate-laden foods, they are going to disrupt your microbiome.

[00:27:18.160] – Carolyn

Then you've got Western diet. We eat so many processed foods. We eat things that are prepackaged, convenient, grab and go. That's not healthy. That's not the way we're supposed to eat. I say, when it comes to food, if man touched it, man usually corrupts it. I like that. If man's touched it, man's corrupted it. But we need to eat as natural as possible. As close to as nature provided it for us. Then it has live enzymes. When we heat a processed food, typically being heat-treated, homogenized, and they're killing all the enzymes. We have wonderful in food, antioxidants, the micro-RNA, all of these things are so powerful for our health. But when we process them, preserve them, it kills it all. And with eating dead food, it doesn't have the nutrients. Then we have stress. We spoke about stress already. That one severely impacts your microbiome. Then lack of exercise. People wonder, Well, why does lack of exercise affect your gut? Well, because when you move, everything else in your body moves. When you exercise every day, you are more likely to be regular with your bowel movements. Everybody needs to take their trash out every day.

[00:28:39.950] – Carolyn

If you don't, you're building up lots of bacteria, lots of pathogenic bacteria in your gut, and that can back up and move back up as well. Those are the seven microbiome, the biggest killers. But there's simple ways that you can help. If you look at countries like South Korea, places like that, where they eat lots of fermented foods. They have far less of these chronic diseases, and the women don't tend to suffer the menopausal symptoms that we have because it's natural for them. They just every day, every meal, they'll just have a few spoons of a fermented food, sauerkraut, kimchi, those things, and you're replenishing your gut with those microbes. You're helping to put the balance back.

[00:29:23.270] – Allan

Now, one of the things I learned in your book, and I love when I learn new things. That's so much fun for me when I go in the book and I did. I didn't know that before, but it makes a ton of sense. I would usually go in, and when I get a comprehensive blood panel, I'm looking for certain deficiencies, usually in vitamin D or vitamin B12. Those are two that are fairly common that people do need to know that they're getting those things because that's also important with eczema. But you said that the blood test could look good. You've got plenty any of it in your bloodstream, but you're not really absorbing it, as you talked about earlier. So you recommended a hair analysis for nutritional deficiencies rather than just rely on a blood test. Can you talk about that a little bit?

[00:30:15.050] – Carolyn

You know, there's been athletes who have been caught for taking illicit substances because they found it in their hair. So your hair represents what you've absorbed. That's why I prefer it as a way to test for deficiencies. And it's also a very good way to test for toxins that are in your body as well. So you can get a hair test that would do both. It could tell if you've got lead poisoning or aluminum, mercury, they can tell that from the hair, and they can also tell your nutritional status. There's some tests that you can do that even indicate allergies from that as well, from the hair. It's so much better because, like we spoke about before, I said, you are what you absorb. You can have free floating things in your bloodstream, but that doesn't mean you're using Similarly to a diabetic. Diabetic has lots and lots of glucose in their blood, but they're not using it. Yeah.

[00:31:07.900] – Allan

I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

[00:31:16.400] – Carolyn

One, I've already mentioned, I believe in eating as naturally as possible, as close to nature as possible, because then we're eating food that's live. It has all the benefits in there. The second one, I would say, is Also, we can get so caught up with, I need this nutritional, I need this, and I'm looking at the physical fitness, but we need to be emotionally fit. If we're carrying unresolved trauma, we have a lot of emotional stress going on, that seriously impacts our health. You could eat healthily, you could exercise, but there's pains, there's sicknesses that can develop because of trauma that we're still carrying in our body. I really We do recommend people work on their emotional health as well as their physical health. Then, as I said before, just being in community. Exercise, just four. Okay, yeah, we need to exercise. Yes, we need to eat close to nature. Emotional health, very important. But part of that, I guess, is being in community. We are society people. We need connection. We need friends. We need love. And if you're isolated, that can affect your emotional health. So we need to have friendships. We need to have companions.

[00:32:36.160] – Allan

Excellent.

[00:32:36.860] – Carolyn

Yeah, those are the four things I would say.

[00:32:38.340] – Allan

Thank you. But, Carolyn, if someone wanted to learn more about you and more about what you're doing, because I think you have a community and some training that you do. And then the book, Eczema Decoded, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:32:50.450] – Carolyn

They can go to the Eczema Academy, eczemaacademy. Com. There's a quiz there that they can take for free, which can identify some hidden drivers of eczema that they've likely not been told about. And they can also take the first module of the course free, so they can try it. Excellent. And the book is available on Amazon. It's on amazon.com. It's on amazon.co.uk. And so people can get that wherever they are.

[00:33:14.490] – Allan

Thank you. So I'll have the links at 40plusfitnesspodcast. Com/661. Carolyn, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:33:25.340] – Carolyn

Thank you so much. Thank you for the invite. I've enjoyed it.

Post Discussion

[00:33:29.740] – Allan

Welcome I'm back, Raz.

[00:33:31.340] – Rachel

Hey, Allan, that was really fascinating. I, like you, don't have any personal experience with eczema, and I don't know that I know of anybody, certainly not in my family or friend group, that have it. I had no idea that it was It's not just a surfacial issue. When you think of a problem with your skin, it's surfacial. You go to the doctor and you get some fancy lotion or medicine to take care of it. But I really had no idea that it was more systemic than surfacial like that.

[00:33:59.920] – Allan

Yeah. Well, the thing is, you may have friends that have this, and they're going to change their overall behavior based on flare-ups and problems. So they wouldn't show you unless you're a really close friend. So a lot of people are suffering with this quietly. Sure. And so I have a client, and he was mentioning that he's really struggling with this, and he's well into his 40s. And so as we got to talking about it, I said, Look, I'll find somebody. So I reached and I found Caroline. Her story with kids, every one of them had it. She ended up getting it. And so it's somewhat genetic, but the core of it is this. And I'll say this, if you have an autoimmune disease, as soon as you know, you get diagnosed, and they say you have an autoimmune disease, you have to address your entire immune system. You can't just attack the skin and take care of the skin because that doesn't… That's a symptom. It's a symptom of a bigger thing. And so that's what Caroline is trying to get to here is you do have to address some of the symptoms just from the sake of sanity, the itching and everything else that comes along with it.

[00:35:13.710] – Allan

But beyond that, you do need to look at the triggers that could be causing this in the first place and address your entire immune system, which means, yes, strengthening your gut microbiome. So that's robotics, prebiotics. It's eating well, it's moving well, it's sleeping well, it's managing your stress, because stress can also be a factor in messing with your immune system. So as you go through this, just realize that we have to address the immune system And then the other side of this, we have to address the things that hurt our immune system. There's so many chemicals and so much out there. The list is astronomical. But if you sit down and spend a little bit of time working your way through this, you can find some answers and reduce it. She believes cure it. The point here is the book will give you some guidelines to go through and assess what's going on in your body and give you some tools and some techniques and things that you can try that should reduce the load on your immune system and help you deal with this a lot better.

[00:36:29.090] – Rachel

Yeah. I'm My gosh, fascinating. I have to mention, too, I loved what she had said about, We aren't what we eat, we are what we absorb. And man, did some light bulbs really go off in my head. My daughter has some issues with leaky gut. You could eat all the protein or the minerals and vitamins that you need, but if your body is not absorbing it, it's wasteful. So you do have to treat all that. And the other big thing that I… I mean, we all know antibiotics bad for our gut biome, but I never gave too much thought to the pesticides on our foods as acting in a similar fashion. Of course, that's not good for you anyway. But still, the pesticides and the super-processed foods with tons of preservatives never would have dawned on me that that would have a similar function in killing off our microbiome as the antibiotics do. It's funny how you just don't put these together often.

[00:37:24.560] – Allan

Yeah. The Environmental Working Group is a not-for-profit organization that that tries to address some of these things. I know at one point, they had an app that you could use that you literally just scan the barcode of the products you use. This is cleaning stuff and, of course, stuff you apply on your body, like shampoos and soaps and things like that. And it'll tell you rate that, allergy-specific and then also just chemicals. And so you can go to them. They are the ones that came up with that I guess, Clean 15 and a bad whatever. They've got cute little names in a list of the things that you would want to look out for if you're trying to avoid some of these things. Because even if you go into the grocery store and you see an apple or you see a pair or some fruit, any fruit, you're like, well, is this safe for me to eat? Or the safest thing or the best thing? In some cases, it's not. So some of the vegetables and fruits are actually more more of a problem with regards to absorbing and having the actual pesticides in the plant versus something to wash off the surface.

[00:38:38.900] – Allan

Goodness. The short of it is if it has a thick skin, you obviously don't eat that thick, thick skin. You toss that. Those tend to be the safer fruits because they have the thickness that's somewhat less permeable than the thinner ones. But at the same time, they've got a list, so I think you can go out to their site and look around. They'll give you some guidelines on how to manage some of that stuff if you're looking at trying to eliminate that as we go, because you remember we did the ape thing a couple of weeks ago. Yes. Okay, so this is the acceptance And then you're trying to identify. So the Environmental Working Group page was probably a good place for you to start looking at the things you typically consume and coming up with a plan for how you can reduce those and come up with safer alternatives.

[00:39:29.390] – Rachel

Yeah, that It would be great to learn that and maybe take these little extra things out of your life and heal your gut and hopefully heal your skin at the same time.

[00:39:38.650] – Allan

Yeah, it should. I mean, that's the theory. Her theory is perfect. I mean, when you have an issue with your immune system, an autoimmune disease, you want to help and support that immune system as best you can and reduce harm. True. And unfortunately, that's not the way sick care is set up in the United States. They want to give you a cream, a shot, a thing, and get you past it, and then it's going to flare up again later. She's unhappy with that outcome, constant treatment versus a cure. But if you can reduce some of the chemicals you're exposed to, you can get your gut working the right way, you're going to look and feel a lot better anyway. But beyond that, it may also be a solution to helping you reduce and/or eliminate the flare-ups that you have with eczema.

[00:40:30.580] – Rachel

Yeah, very fascinating.

[00:40:32.970] – Allan

All right. Well, I'll talk to you next week.

[00:40:35.330] – Rachel

Great. Take care, Allen.

[00:40:36.670] – Allan

You, too.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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