Gluten-Free Diet: 3 Benefits to Your Skin When You Go Against the Grain
Let’s talk a little bit about the benefits of a gluten free diet for skin. We know that gluten is tremendous cause of leaky gut in some individuals who are really sensitive to it. Ceiliacs and what not. They can’t even have a little bit without actually opening up that barrier between the cells. Work is been done by Dr. Phisana to show that the gluten releases substances called Zanuler…. And the zanuler open up the junctions between the cells in the barrier of the intestinal tract allowing incompletely broken down food substances and perhaps even bacterial in…toxins into the bloodstream, into the lymphatic causing havoc as the material gets out to your skin and sensitizes your cells to various food stuffs.
So that’s one part of the problem. So what do you eat if you can’t eat gluten. Well one of my favourite things to eat is squash; spaghetti squash, kobucha squash, acorn squash, all these are really helpful for a substitute because they are very different than your grains. Now some people can deal with gluten free grains. That is things like quinoa can be very helpful.
For some people beans are okay, but beans contain a lot of lectins. And some people just can’t handle them and they the gas is only one symptom that they are having difficulty handling those chemically. So variety I think is the spice of life and with food allergy, it certainly is the spice of life. Because if you eat the same thing over and over, you are going to have more likely getting food allergies as I have observed.
So I would like to suggest that you find a variety of other things if you are going to avoid gluten, and you figure out ways to get them into your menu.
Curious about the Paleo Diet? One of the biggest problems causing skin diseases is all the junk that we put into our bodies. We put in things that are fried, things that have chemicals, things that have been heated to high temperatures, and things that have a variety of toxins from preservatives to colorings, to pesticides.
A Paleo Diet is the idea of back to kind of a “cave man” type time, when there were limited amounts of grains available, when people were mostly eating berries and nuts and fresh leaves that were growing and in season. And also they were eating meat when that arrived at the kill, which wasn’t everyday, not in the refrigerator; and fish of course.
So the paleo diet is a conceptual way of going back to more basics. Of course if you look at the information on paleo diets, people have things that cave men would never have eaten like muffins made out of wild grains. I mean I highly doubt if they were having too much of that.
But the idea of a paleo diet is taking away all those things in modern life that could be causing trouble and going back to a basic diet which is very similar to the cave man diet which is very similar to the Mediterranean diet. Only the paleo diet would probably have almost no grains, almost no beans and of course no gluten which is a grain. So this takes away a lot of the products that were causing trouble for people in various ways.
So there is definitely some sense to that but you got to watch how people are putting that together and what they are allowing in it. Obviously the Paleo Diet is not going to work if you are vegan. I don’t think many cave men were able to avoid eating what the kill was eating even that only occurred every month. So for a lot of people, the Paleolithic Diet helps them get away from those things, and getting on to a food plan that is filled with fresh fruits and vegetable and fresh meat and fish could be a big bonus in helping their skin.
I want to talk a little bit more about anti-aging slowing the aging process and give you three anti-aging diet secrets.
Now you know we are all exposed to ultra violet light which causes aging of the skin. I’ve talked in a previous talk about how to protect yourself by external means and by timing, avoiding the harsh sun in order to keep from creating more damage.
And now I would like to talk about what you can do from the inside to protect yourself and from the inside they are various foods and food ingredients which are highly protective. Let me start with the carotenoids which are present in carrots and it’s interesting that the spectrum of products. It’s not just the isolated beta carotene is probably the best to take. So eating the whole carrot gives you spectrum of different carotenoids and eating other orange and red fruits and vegetables increases that spectrum of protectant antioxidants.
Let’s move on to the next category of bioflavonoid which are present in all kinds of leafy vegetables and fruits.
The bioflavonoid are also very prevalent in citrus fruits and especially in the pulp and in the white part inside the skin. So it’s not the juice so much but the entire fruit that contain those bioflavonoid. You should be sure to consume part of that.
Then, there is another class of antioxidants called proanthocyanidins and these are in the purple fruits and vegetables specially in the skin. And those are also present in certain other plants like ferns and concentrated these can be very powerful and very useful. But it’s also extremely important to have these in your foods where, they act naturally to protect you just as they protect the plants from the sunshine. Because, you know, you take a plant out in the sunshine before it’s fully developed the sun will kill it.
So they developed also the green chlorophyll and the develop these various antioxidants in a whole spectrum in order to protect themselves, and you want to eat those to help protect you. These are some great anti-aging diet secrets.
Rosacea is a condition that’s related to acne that involves redness of the face, enlargement of the vessels on the face, and also fine papules or pustules, usually at the central part of the face. Now there are a number of different types of this rash, some of which can be really disfiguring, where the nose can enlarge. Other types which just involve some redness that’s noticeable when you have an emotional reaction.
There are a number of things that are known to contribute to rosacea, could be caused by tiny mites called demodex that live in the skin. But not all rosacea is caused by that. The chronic inflammation of the skin causes enlargement of the little blood vessels that are in the skin called the capillaries, and that’s part of what causes the redness that you see.
So sometimes doing things or using nutritional substances that help those capillaries can make a big difference. Using inflammatory components of things that calm down inflammation can help make a difference and there’s a part that’s related to acne. So all the things that help the digestive contribution to acne can also be helpful for treating rosacea. And the main thing is not to be upset by it because that causes more blood to the face. And that causes the rosacea to be worst. So unwinding all the vicious cycles around this problem can make a big difference.
The One Thing to Ditch to Keep Your Skin Young Naturally
All of us want to keep our skin looking young naturally.
Today, I want to speak about one of our sweetest poisons. I say sweet poison, it’s very attractive to all of us, including me, and that is: sugar.
You might not realize sugar has at least 3 different ways that it can aggravate disease, aging and acne.
First, it can lead to overgrowth of the wrong kinds of organisms in the intestinal tract and elsewhere the body. Those organisms include yeast and harmful bacteria.
Second, those organisms can lead to inflammation of the intestinal lining, causing a condition known as leaky gut and that leaky gut allows allergens to invade other parts of the body.
Third, eating sugar often causes tooth decay. If you eat sugar, you don’t brush your teeth right away, and it sits in your mouth, the bacteria are going party–they will chomp away at your teeth.
And chronic infection in the teeth can lead to infection in the bone in the jaw. Chronic infections in the jaw are often very hard to get rid of during your lifetime. And they can “weep” gram-negative bacteria and gram-negative toxins down into your lymphatic system, down to your heart, down to your breasts, and out also into various organs of the body, causing real damage.
The last way that sugar can cause problems is by elevating the insulin level. When you eat a lot of sugar, your sugar level spikes ways up and insulin is released in order to get that sugar into the cells. The more sugar you have and the more often you have it, the more you release insulin.
When you do this over and over again, you wind up causing high insulin levels, and the receptors for the insulin stop becoming so willing to hold the insulin. Then, the insulin has to go up higher and higher. You then get a molecule released called Insulin-Like Growth Factor. That Insulin-Like Growth Factor has a variety of actions, and one of them is to aggravate acne.
It’s so worthwhile to monitor your sugar usage and cut back however you can manage. It’s a challenge, but a very worthwhile one. You can keep your skin looking young naturally.
When your face ages, it’s often perceived by wrinkles and creases. Some of those wrinkles and creases come from having the same expression over and over again.
That expression is usually is one of squinting or anger or looking with interest listening to a friend speak. These are all expressions that cause a kind of additional wrinkling that you don’t need to have.
These are habits. If they occur over and over, year after year, decade after decade, you begin to get permanent creases in those areas. So you want to try to relax, and not have repeated wrinkling occurring from squinting or anger.
You can even try looking in the mirror and seeing what you are doing with your face on a repeated basis, and try to relax and let that go.
That can do a lot for reducing the creases and the wrinkles that often associated with aging of the skin. Collagen and elasticity are another matter, which we’ll discuss in a future post.
Let’s talk a little bit about natural eczema healing. Eczema is something that a lot of people experience, and I see more and more people with it in my practice every year.
There are some parts of the world, especially industrial cities like Liverpool, where the population with eczema is approaching 20% of children. Now what is going on here? Why is there so much eczema?
What causes eczema and how do you heal eczema naturally? It’s caused by a number of things. One of those causes is a defective barrier of the skin. That defective barrier can be caused by excessive washing.
GENETICS
But it can also be caused by a genetic tendency not to make the right peptides that keep the barrier to be intact. Those peptides are manufactured, and they evolve and have a number of different roles as they move through the skin. The first role is as a barrier, but as they move through the skin, they also become part of the anti-microbial peptides that cause the skin to kill trouble-causing bacteria. People who have have this genetic tendency not only have a less strong barrier, but they have less ability to break down the bacteria that are always attacking the skin.
People with eczema have the tendency to develop staph and streptococcus infections. And those staph and strept infections have a vicious cycle effect. Because they cause more cells to get alerted; more immune cells get turned on to be reactive and create more inflammation, which creates more itching, which creates more scratching, and more and more eczema.
So it’s really important for those people to use proper anti-bacterials and do whatever they can to keep from scratching and destroying their skin. And to use various kinds of things that enhance the barrier of the skin.
BARRIERS
Recently there has been a lot of work on using various kinds of waxes that contribute to the skin barrier for natural eczema healing. Pioneering dermatologists in San Francisco explored these waxes, which are now the basis of a lot of really popular products used to protect the skin for those with eczema.
Of course, any kind of lipid or fat or oil can add some benefit. But if you have eczema, the paradox is that it’s likely that if you use something over and over, you are going to become allergic to it. So people who have eczema soon become allergic to everything that they start putting on, partly because of the nature of the original barrier itself. Creams are much more elegant to put on than Vaseline or coconut oil. But they contain many different components, like detergents, to keep the oil and the water mixed.
Any cream with oil and water mixed together, can get infected easily so you have to have a preservative system. And there are only a handful of different preservatives that are used to protect these different creams from germs. So if you switch from one cream to the next, you are likely to wind up with the same preservative system one out of four times. So you still have trouble because you can have an allergic reaction to the preservatives.
On top of this, if you look at most of these creams you’ll find that there are a number of chemical substances whose names you can’t pronounce. Some of those chemicals can be potential allergens as well.
It’s not unlikely that after a while you are going to become allergic to either the components or the fragrances in those creams. So you’ve got to be very careful with what you’re putting on your skin if you have eczema.
I do help people who have these chronic issues to finally break the cycle, but I share all this to say that if you’re having a hard time controlling your eczema, you’re not alone, and the treatments don’t make it easy. That’s my holistic dermatology perspective for natural eczema healing.
I’d like some thoughts on anti-aging of the skin. Aging skin needs a little bit of extra stimulation in order to be really as thick as possible to keep the collagen active. This keeps the lymphatics in the blood supply moving. Part of that is good old exercise and outdoor enjoyment, and hopefully protecting yourself from the sun.
Another part of it is stimulating your skin to kind of wake it up in the morning is by dry skin brushing. You take a soft brush, and you brush your skin. Brush it all towards the area right below your navel which is where all the lymphatic material collects. And you do that all over very lightly and gently. You shouldn’t do it with a brush that is stiff enough to hurt you or to mark your skin. If you have some kind of skin problem that doesn’t allow that, then that’s not the thing to do. But the dry skin brushing can be a very nice method for keeping your skin stimulated.
If you don’t have a brush you can use Turkish towel or a wash cloth. That little bit of stimulation moving towards the center of the body can be very helpful to get your skin woken up and keep it alive and invigorated.
Simply put, Dr. Dattner has done more for me in three months than any other doctor has done in 30 years. Until now, my skin has been more than a daily annoyance, infringing upon my ability to work, maintain a social life, and merely live freely. If you are someone like me, who has had a lifetime of skin ailments, or just recently begun experiencing problematic skin, Dr. Dattner will assuredly discover the culprit and provide a clear and natural route to health.
I arrived at Dr. Dattner’s door with a history of eczema that had been mismanaged for most of my life. Previous doctors had over-prescribed corticosteroid creams and pills for nearly 20 years, to the point that my body had become dependent upon them, not even responding at certain doses. When I chose to stop all forms of steroids (and never touch them again) nearly five years ago, I experienced the worst redness, swelling, flaking, itching, oozing, insomnia, and pain I have ever endured. This lasted, at its height for four months, but continued to haunt me in the intervening years. During this time, doctors had tried treating me with a variety of immunosuppressants and long-term antibiotics, with limited success, ultimately telling me that “this is just the way you are.” Sadly, a part of me believed them.
On my own, I was constantly researching and quickly becoming aware of leaky gut syndrome, and did what I could on my own through diet to attempt to heal myself, but found that this could only go so far. Thankfully, after moving to the New York area and relapsing into yet another extended skin flare, I discovered Dr. Dattner’s practice online. After my very first appointment, I felt that I was on the right track. Not only is he a thorough practitioner with a confidence that instills trust in his patients, Dr. Dattner is one of the first medical professionals who has truly listened to me and worked with body’s quirks rather than against them. Through diet and natural supplements, I have seen remarkable progress leaps and bounds beyond anything achieved by western medicines.
I cannot recommend Dr. Dattner or his holistic approach to healing more highly. He has given me back my skin, and thus my life.
What’s Your Spirituality Have to Do with Your Skin?
I’d like to talk about spirituality and skin disease from a holistic dermatology perspective. What does spirituality have to do with skin disease? We know skin disease is related to your skin, it might be related to allergies, it might even be related to the food you eat and what you absorb. So what does spirituality have to do with that?
Let me start with the process of digestion. Digestion breaks down your foods so that they get absorbed as single amino acids or small peptides. Molecules that are so small that they don’t set off a reaction; they don’t cause an allergy. But if you don’t break your food down into small molecules, big pieces get through; molecules big enough to set off an immune response. The receptor in the lymphocyte sees a big peptide in, say 8 amino acids, and it reacts. So we want to avoid having big peptides getting into your bloodstream and your lymphatics. And the way we do this is by enhancing digestion.
If you’re eating and you are on the telephone and you are buying something on the internet or you are worrying about your classes, or your career, or your income taxes, or what your friend said on Facebook, or any number of things, you’re interrupting your digestion. If your mind is in that place, you are in a reaction mode, or stress mode, which we call a flight or fight response. That’s known technically as Sympathetic Response. And if you are in Sympathetic Response mode, you shut off your digestion. Because evolutionarily, thousands of years ago, you didn’t need good digestion if you were being chased by a tiger. You needed to get away and use your muscles and shut off your digestion–or you’d get digested yourself.
But if you are in stress mode when you are eating or you are watching a TV program that has some horrendous scary thing going on, you are back in stress mode, and you are not going to digest your food optimally. And if you don’t break down your food adequately, then you are going to absorb bigger pieces, molecules, food substances that are big enough to set off an allergic response where they hit in the skin. Or these molecules might put you to sleep and make you drowsy or other kinds of things.
So, the old-fashioned method of taking a moment before you eat is good. Relax and let go of your thoughts, your worries and cares, and then take an additional moment and become thankful for the universe providing this and filling your whole body with that thankfulness. And then fill your body with the joy of the food you are about to eat. That gets the digestive juices flowing, and that’s very important for breaking down allergens and for preventing allergic disorders of all kinds especially skin diseases.