What’s Causing Your Skin Problem?

When it comes to skin issues, there can be a whole lot of symptoms. Dryness, itching, rashes, bumps, and acne are all common issues that occur with the skin. The difficult part about skin conditions is figuring out what the underlying driver of the issue is. It’s easy to get an acne cream or topical steroid to get things to calm down, but what’s the long-term solution? People often live with these conditions with no known timeframe of when they might get some relief. That’s unacceptable in my eyes. There has to be a solution, you just have to be smart enough to figure it out. Keep reading to learn what’s causing your skin problem.

When it comes to dryness, there are two immediate things that should come to mind: fats and vitamin A. Vitamin A is super healthy for healthy skin and it is a fat-soluble vitamin. In people who have dry skin, the organ that is most often functioning sub optimally is the gallbladder. Your gallbladder is responsible for holding and expelling bile when fat digestion is necessary. There are nutrients that are needed to thin the bile as well as thicken it.

In the case of dry skin, vitamin A is super helpful because bile is usually thicker. This can be somewhat of an because vitamin A isn’t absorbed well without proper fat digestion. Fear not, there are other nutrients that such as bile salts, glycine, and taurine that make up bile that can help get the process moving. Once the gallbladder is functioning better, increased animal fat consumption with vitamin A do wonders for dry skin.

Acne is most often indicative of excess hormones, dihydrotestosterone or DHT in particular. Whenever there are signs of excessive hormones, you need to think of it through two lenses. Firstly, the body simply produces too many hormones, or secondly, the body produces normal amounts that the liver can’t break down fast enough. Solving chronic acne is often a combination of both of these things.

Steroid hormones such as testosterone, DHT, DHEA, and estrogen are all broken down in three different liver pathways. These are sulfation, glucuronidation, and glutathione conjugation. If any of these pathways gets backed up due to a lack of cofactor nutrients, it can lead to acne when DHT builds up. Some things that help with breakdown are NAC, artichoke, and liposomal glutathione. On the flipside, testosterone is converted in excess to DHT when there are high amounts of insulin. Seems there’s a reason that teenage boys who eat excessive sugar get acne. Herbs such as saw palmetto and rosemary can help decrease this conversion.

Rashes are most often due to a histamine reaction due to some sort of allergy. Food allergies are common, but sensitivities to different environmental factors or detergents/cleaning products can contribute to them as well. I don’t like to automatically jump into the mindset of eliminating exposure to these things permanently. Why is the immune system reacting so heavily to these things? Yes, there are situations where somebody just can’t handle a food. Oftentimes, there are a few other underlying infections, toxicities, or stressors that cause the immune system to be in a hypersensitive state. In kids, metals are common offenders. Clean them out of there with things like glutathione, zinc, selenium, and sometimes activated charcoal and hypersensitivity can decrease leading to fewer rashes.

Underlying gut issues often contribute to red, bumpy, itchy skin. I these cases, heat and dampness can make symptoms much worse. These are token signs of a fungal issue. As with any dysbiosis, herbs such as neem, noni, astragalus, and berberines are great options to help reduce overgrowth. More often than not, it takes a round of cycling at least three different herbs to truly kill off all of the rogue microbes.

All of the skin issues that I just talked about can be uncomfortable to deal with and annoying to seek treatment for. If I had a dollar for every time I’d heard that a dermatologist said the cause of a skin condition is unknown, I’d have at least five (hundred). Just know there is hope. Find somebody who’s smart enough to figure it out.

If you are experiencing any skin issues and would like to discuss them, book a free consultation with me here. To find other docs that practice how I do, click here. For more health articles, click here.