Treating Adult Acne & Rosacea From The Inside Out

Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth is also one of the triggers for rosacea. A lot of patients that you see with rosacea will have irritable bowel type symptoms or bloating type symptoms. And when you do some testing for that and you treat it, that oftentimes will clear up their rosacea.

Welcome to the Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman. That's Pharmacy with an F-A-R-M-A-C-Y, a place for conversations that matter. and if you've got skin problems, you should listen up because this conversation is going to matter to you, particularly something called rosacea, acne rosacea. It's a terrible skin condition. We'll talk about what it is, but if you have it, you know what I'm talking about, and it is miserable. And today we have with us none other than Dr. Todd Lapeen, who's my colleague, a frequent guest here on the special episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy, the House Call episode. He's a graduate of Dartmouth Medical School. He's board certified in internal medicine. We've worked together for decades now. It's almost heading on three decades. It's kind of scary, holy cow, you don't look any different than the day I met you, so functional medicine must be working. He is an incredible guy and he teaches all over the world. Well, not so much anymore, but you know, virtually now. Virtually. And has been, as part of the faculty of the Institute for Functional Medicine, American College of Advancement Medicine, Age Management Medicine, and many, many other great, great organizations. So, Todd, welcome back to the Doctor's Pharmacy. Thank you, Mark. Okay, so first of all, we're talking about this weird condition that some people never heard of called acne rosacea. We're gonna talk about what it is, how traditional medicine deals with it, why that's all wrong, and how we approach it using functional medicine.

So what is acne rosacea? Okay, well that's, acne rosacea is a chronic inflammatory condition that adults get. It's also another name for it is adult acne. And patients who have it will get redness to the face, usually over the cheeks and the nose, sometimes the chin. and it can also be pretty severe. You can get telangiectasias, which are little blood vessels.

So, there's little blood lines in your face.

Yeah, vasodilation of the blood vessels, papules, pustules. So, it looks like adult acne is really what it is. And, interestingly, it's fairly common. About 10% of the population has it. It tends to be more common in people who have Celtic origins, so Irish, Scottish, English. which is interesting. I'll talk about that later.

So, I'm Jewish from the Middle East.

I'm safe. Yeah, it might be, absolutely. It might be, it might be, yeah. And, a lot of famous people have actually had this. Bill Clinton has one, WC Fields.

And they- Big bulbous nose. Exactly.

So, extreme version of it. Yeah, so one of the complications of rosacea is chronic inflammatory changes to the skin, so you can get what's called rhinophyma, which is basically when you see a clown with a red nose, that's rhinophyma. Yeah, that's what rhinophyma is. And it can be actually quite debilitating.

I mean, when it gets really, really.

You can get this distortion of the facial features, especially over the nose. Yeah.

Yeah, so it's this really nasty kind of acne and it's what triggers it, do we know, from a traditional medicine point of view?

Well, there are a variety of different triggers. When people have rosacea, things that can trigger it are spicy foods, alcohol can do it.

Yeah, I mean, alcoholics tend to get this a lot, right? If you're an alcoholic and WC Fields clearly was. Yeah. Those of you who don't know who he is, Google it. Yeah. It's probably before your time, but it is often driven by alcohol.

Yeah, and my own theory on alcohol as it ties in with that is that alcohol does vasodilate blood vessels, but also alcohol in excess is also a big contributor to leaky gut. And I get my patients to understand this concept that alcohol can promote leaky gut. So if I took a shot of tequila and I threw it in your eye, what would happen? It would burn.

Your eye would water, right?

Your eye would get leaky. You have leaky eye, leaky gut. So chronic alcohol ingestion is probably one of the biggest things for low-grade endotoxin and leaky gut. And that's also tied in, as we'll talk about in terms of irritable bowel and bacterial overgrowth.

Yeah, we're gonna get into leaky gut, 'cause that is a very big issue, general, and particularly with things like skin disorders like acne rosacea.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So, Todd, in functional medicine, we take a very different view, which is we treat things from the inside out, not the outside in. Dermatology is all about lotions, potions and creams and slathering stuff on your face to sort of get it good from the outside in. But it's kind of backwards. So what are the traditional treatments for rosacea? Why are they not the best idea? You know, when I went through my.

Medical training, there was an old saying that the dermatologist, basically, if it's dry, wet it. If it's wet, moisturize it. And if you don't know what's going.

On, give it a steroid. That's essentially-- that's pretty much right.

That's pretty much dermatology.

I learned the same lesson. Yeah, right.

That'S it. And, you know, dermatology and dry it.

If it's wet, dry it. If it's dry, wet it.

And if you don't know, give it a steroid. Exactly. That's the mantra of the modern dermatologist. But again, it's like you said, it's an external manifestation of something going on internally. So the question is, what's driving this? And in preparing for this talk, I mean, I've seen so many patients with rosacea.

It's not funny. What do they put on there?

They give antibiotics on the side. Yeah, yeah, they'll give like, you know, metronidazole cream, which is a topical antibiotic.

It's like an anti-parasite antibiotic.

Yeah, one of the newer medications, and this is sort of an interesting thing, is a cream called ivermectin. So this sort of blew me away because this is relatively new and I think we were talking about it earlier. Yeah, the worm pill. It's a parasite pill. They're using it for COVID even. Really? Yeah. Yeah. So it's really, it was, so I said to my, so I was reading and I actually had a patient who came in and was on the ivermectin cream and was doing very, very well on the ivermectin cream. And then I said to myself, well, how is an anti-parasitic medication topically helping with worms in your face? Yeah, well, that's also interesting because one of the things that is strongly tied in with rosacea, now remember rosacea is just over the face. It's this facial manifestation of an internal issue is that we have these little creepy crawlers on our face and they're called mites, skin mites. Yeah, dermoxides.

Kind of like dust mites.

We all have them. Everybody has these. And the interesting thing is that patients who have rosacea have a much, much higher density of skin mites on them for whatever reason. And normally they basically, they're like little, you call them like little parasites, they're ectoparasites, and they sit on the skin and they eat your dead tissues and they eat off of the oils on the glands. And normally you don't have a reaction to them. They're sort of like a benign parasite. But, in some people who have high concentrations of these skin mites, the body makes a very, very high immune response to it. So, getting back to the ivermectin, which is basically an antiparasitic, it may be actually working as an antiparasitic for some of these skin mites.

Yeah. So, maybe there's an infectious cause to this.

Yeah.

So, the things they use are minocycline, which is an antibiotic, flaGile or metronidazole, which is in any parasite and antibiotic. Ivermectin, which is an anti-worm.

Oral doxycycline is another one.

Yeah, oral antibiotics, which probably is a really bad idea given the fact that.

You have a microbiome and you don't.

Want to be killing it to fix your skin. Exactly, exactly, yeah.

And why might the minocycline work? Why might antibiotics orally work? Well, there's a thought and it's actually in the literature is that small intestinal bacterial overgrowth is also one of the triggers for rosacea. A lot of patients that you with rosacea will have irritable bowel type symptoms or bloating type symptoms. And when you do some testing for that and you treat it, that oftentimes will clear up their rosacea.

Yeah, absolutely. So I think we're not averse to using topicals and topical medication when necessary, but if you really focus on root causes, which is what functional medicine does, you come up with a very different set of approaches that actually works better. is longer lasting and doesn't require you to keep putting on lotions, potions and creams for the rest of your life or taking oral antibiotics.

Right, exactly. And then, getting back to the ivermectin, ivermectin, in preparing for this talk, I did a little bit of research and the patients who are more prone towards rosacea have a problem with too much of what's called the cathelicidin antimicrobial peptides. So these are- that's a big mouthful. Yeah, they're called CAMPs, C-A-M-Ps, cathelicidin antimicrobial peptides. and these peptides are part of the built-in innate part of the immune system to protect our skin against various types of infections. And it turns out that ivermectin actually helps with these antimicrobial peptides because people who have rosacea have too much of these peptides. They have an over robust response to antimicrobials. So it's thought that the, it's actually a breakdown product, it's called LL-37. And ivermectin and actually works on dampening down these antimicrobial peptides to decrease inflammation in the skin.

Okay, so in terms of the cause, it seems to be a combination of internal and external factors.

Yeah.

Something on the skin and then something internally, but from traditional medicine, there really isn't an approach to helping heal the skin from the inside out.

No, not at all.

And whether you have acne or eczema or psoriasis, or rosacea or any one of the myriad skin conditions that we get, most of them have their root cause inside, not on the topical level.

Exactly.

And often it's the gut.

Yeah, absolutely.

So you mentioned a little bit earlier leaky gut. So take us through from a functional medicine perspective our thinking about the root causes. What are the things that you think about when someone comes in your office and their face is all red and they got all this acne on there and they've got these telangiectasia, these little red lines everywhere and you can see the blood vessels dilated, and they're kind of looking like Santa Claus.

Yeah, exactly. And they also get photosensitivity too, which is the other thing. And the interesting thing is, they can't.

Go in the sun without getting it worse.

And that also ties in with these antimicrobial peptides because it's thought, it's theorized that the Celts, the ones who live in the higher northern latitudes, they don't get as much sun as we do. so it's thought that from an evolutionary standpoint that they benefit by having this. They have a more robust immune system when there's not enough sunshine. And sunshine will actually activate this innate immune system, and that's why sun exposure oftentimes makes it worse because they produce more of these antimicrobial peptides, and then those antimicrobial peptides have to get processed, and in the process of breaking them apart, the immune system then starts responding to it. So that's why there's sort of a.

Photosensitivity aspect to it. And what are the other sort of.

Things you think about when someone comes to your office with rosacea? well, one of the things I oftentimes look at is their vitamin D levels. Vitamin D is, is part of the, uh, the immune system, and it's, it's tied in with, uh, intimately with the antimicrobial peptides, uh, system in the body. So oftentimes, patients who have this have low vitamin D levels. Uh, we'll look at the, uh, microbiome testing to see if there's any, uh, evidence of dysbiosis, uh, bacterial overgrowth testing, the SIBO testing, checking for hydrogen and methane. Uh, I mean, probably the majority of patients who I see of rosacea have problems with with bacterial overgrowth. Other thing is low stomach acid, which also promotes and contributes to bacterial overgrowth. So checking for the patients, sometimes these patients are also on PPIs. Acid blocking medications. Acid blocking medications, absolutely. Because we have acid in our stomach to help us to digest food, it's also there to decrease the amount of bacteria higher up in the colon.

So it's good to have stomach acid. Yeah, because if you don't have stomach acid, then the pH of your small intestine changes, becomes more alkaline, and then bugs grow in there that wouldn't necessarily grow. Yeah. And that's when you get this overgrowth of bad bugs in there. And it can be what we call SIBO, which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, where bad bugs migrate up from the lower intestine into the small intestine. Then when you eat food, you get bloating, distension. It causes leaky gut. You end up causing damage to the lining of the gut and food particles and bacterial toxins leak in and create inflammation throughout the body and on the skin. So, you know, leaky gut can cause hundreds of different manifestations, one of which is rosacea. And unless you think about that and know how to treat it, you may not be able to be successful with it. There's also another condition that I've seen, Todd, in a lot of my patients called SIFO. SIFO. Small intestinal fungal overgrowth. And a lot of people talk about it as Candida, but there's many, many species of yeast and fungus. And so what I found often is that treating the gut through addressing the bacterial overgrowth, the yeast overgrowth, healing leaky gut, dealing with the food sensitivities makes a profound impact. And a lot of times it is food sensitivities that can trigger. I mean, for example, gluten we've talked about on the show, that is one of the biggest drivers of leaky gut. And even if you are not celiac, and even if you don't think you have any symptoms or don't notice any symptoms when you eat gluten, Dr. Alessio Fasano, who's the world's expert at Harvard on gluten, he said, everybody who eats gluten creates some level of leaky gut. Now, most people kind of handle it. Right.

Transient leaky gut.

Exactly. So I don't know. Like, it's probably not a good idea to eat that much gluten because of the potential to create leaky gut and how that is linked to so many chronic diseases, including weight gain, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, autoimmune diseases, allergies, acne. I mean, you just name it. Depression, all this stuff. is connected by leaky gut. So I really, I think, you know, getting a very different thinking about this is key. And you did, you talked about the stomach acid, you talked about the acid blockers, you talked about maybe other things that, you know, are relevant in the gut and fix certain infections like H. Pylori, which is a common bacteria that causes ulcers, also has been linked to H. Pylori and food sensitivities. Hey, everybody, it's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into the doctor's pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do. introducing you to all the experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing, which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter. And in it, I share my favorite stuff from foods to supplements to gadgets to tools to enhance your health. It's all the cool stuff that I use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health. And I'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter. I'll only send it to you once a week on Fridays. Nothing else, I promise. And all you have to do is go to drhyman.com/pics to sign up. That's drhyman.com/pics, P-I-C-K-S, and sign up for the newsletter and I'll share with you my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better and live younger longer. Now back to this week's episode. So how do we approach these patients when they come in? What are the kinds of things that we would do from a diagnostic point of view that you wouldn't get when you went to the dermatologist?

Well, from a diagnostic standpoint, again, I would do testing for, you know, leaky gut. I would do intestinal permeability testing, checking for antibodies to zonulin with the Cyrex testing that we do, Cyrex array number three.

So that's basically there's a test that we do at the Center for the Ultra Wellness Center here in Lenox, Massachusetts, where we're recording live, is Cyrex testing. It's a lab that looks at antibodies. that you produce against these proteins that are in your gut that come from gluten or even from bacteria. And so if you're creating a lot of antibodies to these proteins, it's clear that they're getting across the lining of your gut, leaking into your bloodstream and causing an immune response, which is not only local but systemic. Right.

And there are other ways you can actually measure zonulin in the blood and you can measure it also in the stool. And that's only like a snapshot in time. So you can develop leaky gut for, you know, a couple hours or a day or so, but if if it stops, then you're also fine. The antibodies against zonulin is the one that tells you there's this chronic leaky gut, which is really more valuable. If I gave you a shot of tequila, then an hour later measure your.

Zonulin, it's gonna go up. Okay, where's the tequila?

Yeah, sounds good. Right. So that's why I think that the testing for the antibodies against zonulin is even more valuable in these patients with chronic conditions.

And then what other kinds of tests besides the zonulin and the lipopolysaccharide tests that we do to look at the antibodies against and sees proteins in the.

Gut that come from a leaky gut. We'll do the small intestinal bacterial overgrowth where we measure the production of fermentation products. So hydrogen and methane are gases that are normally produced in the body. When people have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, those will be produced at higher levels so we can check that. And over time, or I think the test that we do is a three hour test. So you measure baseline hydrogen methane, check it at intervals of about every half hour. and you do that over a three-hour time period, that can tell you definitively do you or do you not have bacterial overgrowth and how bad is it?

And it's a predominantly hydrogen or is it methane? So essentially what you're saying is that when we eat foods, humans don't produce gas, it's the bacteria that are fermenting the foods we eat that produce the gas. So if you feel bloated or distended or you're passing gas, it's not you, you can blame it on the bugs. But the problem is that we don't know how to regulate the bugs bugs and get a healthier ecosystem. And that is what most physicians never were trained to do. And it's the foundation of functional medicine. It's the foundation of our practice here at the UlceroVax Center where we really dig into these issues and we look at bacterial overgrowth, we look at fungal overgrowth, we look at leaky gut, we look at food sensitivities, we'll do other testing, we'll look at whether you're reacting.

To gluten or dairy or eggs or other foods. And it's really helpful in drilling down on what's really going on with people. Absolutely. And we're talking basically producing gases, that's basically a fermentation process. Normally, fermentation happens lower in the colon. That's in the colonic area. It was more of an anaerobic environment or a lack of oxygen. That's normal for that to be happening. But when that process is taking place higher up in a different neighborhood, it's not a good thing.

Yeah. And I mean, you want your upper intestine to be sterile and-- Or mostly sterile. Mostly sterile. And when all that bacteria migrates up there, it's just a bad situation. when we take acid blockers, when we are low in magnesium, which half of us are, when we're under stress and our gut motility is slow, when we've taken lots of antibiotics and it screws up our whole system in there. All these are reasons why we get these bacterial overgrowth issues and they're super common and they're relatively easy to treat with functional medicine. Now, the other thing we do is look at stool testing, right? So we look at not just the proteins from leaky gut or we look at the food sensitivities or bacterial growth, gas production, but we actually look at the poop No. So what are we what are we looking for in the poop that helps us figure out what's going on?

Well, there's a lot of things, uh, you know, there's gold in there uh there. It's it'sld our hills it's golden than our hills. Yeah. So a lot of information can be determined by doing a microbial analysis. so you can look at the overall balance of bacteria, so there are everybody's got hundreds of different kinds of bacteria in the GI track, and we can measure those using DNA PCR analysis and we can do quantitative, we can measure how many there are of each different species, look at ones that are normally found, look at ones that are found in the gut, but normally they want to be at low levels, look at bacteria that are associated with autoimmunity, so things like Citrobacter, Klebsiella, Salmonella, et cetera. We can look at now analyze for yeast overgrowth, various forms of yeast, and then also microbial markers of inflammation, things like Calprotectin, looking for fat, so you.

Can get a- Enzyme function.

Enzyme function, butyrate, checking for butyrate.

Short-chain fatty acids. Indicators of healthy ecosystem. So, you know, Todd, what you're saying is that, you know, traditional sort of microbiome testing, they just look at the, the genetic material of the, the microbiome, and they can't really test everything, although they can do some really extraordinary tests now. But there, there are kits out there where you can look at your microbiome, but it's far more than just what bugs you have in there. It's what they're doing. And so we look at the result, the function on the ecosystem. We look, like you said, at the enzyme function, are you absorbing your food, is there inflammation, are you having good bugs in there that are producing the super fuel for the gut, these short chain fatty acids that are so important. Oh, huge. Do you have the right balance of gut, are you missing some key bugs, you have overgrowth of bad bugs, you.

Have yeast, you have parasites, and it's such a much more comprehensive stool test that we do here at the Ultra Wellness Center. We were talking earlier about Delta sleep, and the interesting thing is that when you have good bugs in the digestive tract and you're eating in a fiber in your diet and you're producing higher levels of butyrate that has an effect on the brain and also improves sleep.

That's amazing.

Yeah. Yeah.

So you have to have your. Get your poop together to sleep better. I got it.

Okay.

That's a good, good strategy. It's better to take in the Ambien. Yeah. All right. So we also look at, you know, other things like Omega-3 fats and. And other fats because a lot of inflammation come from not having the right balance of fats in your body.

Yep. Yeah.

And, and I think, you know, so, so when you have a patient come in, what are the, what are the steps you would take initially to, to treat a patient with rosacea from a functional medicine perspective?

You know, again, taking the history is the big one. You know, I always will ask people, what's your ethnic background? A lot of people say, you know, I'm white. No, it's like, you know, are you Irish, English, German, Jewish, Russian, whatever? Because the rosacea is typically found in, in light-skinned, fair-skinned people. And from a genetic standpoint, they are the ones who are more likely to have that. It's just an interesting part to have in terms of the history. And then I'll just ask them, what is it you're eating? Are you eating a standard American diet? How much alcohol are you drinking? How much stress do you have? Stress also- Caffeine. Caffeine can play a role. Spicy foods and stress. Yeah, those are all things which can sort of, it's like adding gasoline to the fire because literally rosacea is the skin on fire in the facial area. but doing the testing for essential fatty acids, making sure that they have the right balance of the essential fats in their diet. A lot of people are, have too much omega-6 which tends to be more pro-inflammatory yeah lack of the omega-3s one of the oils, I don't know if you've used it that I, that I found it very helpful with patients who have rosacea is borage oil and even primrose oil. Yeah, they tend to be very, they help to dampen down that inflammatory response.

And that's a very key omega-6 that people don't think about much, but it's called gamma. Fumaric acid, which is a very powerful anti-inflammatory. It's not like the Omega-3s, but it's sort of like the Omega-3s, but on the Omega-6 side. Exactly. And it's something we really have a hard time getting in our diet. It's from like borage oil and, you know, a few other things, but evening primrose oil. So, yeah, that's very powerful. I agree. And I also think that, you know, when I see these patients, I also think about looking for other Clues, like, do they have yeast issues? Have they been in lots of antibiotics? Are they on acid blockers, which caused yeast overgrowth?

Yeah.

Do they have other fungal issues? dandruff, do they have anal itching, do they have thrush or a white coating in their tongue? Do they have vaginal yeast infections? Do they have other skin markers of yeast like little tinea or other kinds of things? So you'll see often a pattern of other issues around fungal stuff. I'll check for H. Pylori, I'll check again all the tests we did talk about and see what's really going on. And then from the treatment point of view, you start with an elimination diet with an anti-inflammatory diet. Right.

Exactly, yeah. Putting patients on an anti-inflammatory elimination diet, 80% of the time, it doesn't matter what they come in with, they'll actually get better. Getting them off of the pro-inflammatory foods and then putting in foods which are anti-inflammatory, cold water fish, sardines, wild salmon, the essential oils like evening primrose oil, help to sort of dampen down that inflammatory response. Yeah, I agree.

I think we don't understand most of us how powerful food is as medicine and how it can drive tremendous amounts of inflammation throughout the body. Obviously, if it's on your skin, it's visible, but there's also invisible inflammation that.

You'Re not seeing that's driving all the chronic diseases. And, you actually triggered a thought because there's actually a paper that says if you have rosacea, you have a higher instance of Alzheimer's disease. Oh, wow.

So, it's not just a cosmetic issue.

It'S actually systemic inflammation. You have a red face and a red brain that's on fire. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I was sort of blown away by that. That's fascinating.

Yeah.

Especially in women.

It's actually more common in women. So, you advise people the obvious things, cut out the alcohol, the caffeine, stay away from the sun, stay away from spicy foods, but also tell them stay away from gluten which triggers leaky gut, often dairy. You actually add in all the anti-inflammatory foods that are important, all the phytochemicals from plant foods and turmeric and ginger and garlic and rosemary and all these powerful foods that can really help. to reduce inflammation. And then we often directly treat the issues that are going on. It could be leaky gut. So we, we give them a gut repair program. This could be fungal or bacterial overgrowth. So we'll, we'll take care of those with either herbs or antibiotics or antifungals. And you'll see these patients really dramatically improve when they change their diet and they resort their gut. And then sometimes we'll use, like, things like giving primrose oil.

I found that digestive enzymes and hydrochloric acid. Absolutely. Often are really helpful, too.

Yeah.

I've been so, I've been surprised at how many people have a, what I would call relative lack of hydrochloric acid in the stomach. I was adventuring to say that, you know, the majority of people don't have too much acid. They have not enough acid in the stomach. Yeah.

Well, that's interesting because the third leading category of drugs are the acid blockers, like Prilosec and prevacid and Pepsi and all these other drugs, these Nexium, mass effects. I mean, they're just, like, out there everywhere. And now they're. Now they're over the counter. And everybody. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, I. I just. I. We've talked about this before on the podcast, but when I was in medical school, the drug reps came in because it's drugs that just come out and they're like, listen, guys, these guys, these drugs work. They're great. They will help you with ulcers. They're really bad.

You don't want to keep anybody on.

It for more than six weeks. Right. Those are huge. It was a huge. Stomach acid. It's really bad long term. These are the drug reps telling us this. And now it's like people are on it for decades and it causes B12 deficiency, magnesium deficiency, zinc deficiency. Osteoporosis, pneumonia, bacterial overgrowth. irritable bowel syndrome. When you get rid of your heartburn.

But you got all these other problems.

Yeah, that's true. And then it's one of those drugs that's so sneaky because it's addictive. Once you get on it, it's hard to get off it because it causes this rebound. So when you suppress the stomach acid and you stop the drug, the acid production goes crazy, which makes you feel horrible. And then you go, I need the drug. But you can actually taper it down.

And use other strategies to help people get off it. And you bring up a really good point because a lot of a lot of the pharmaceutical medications, especially some of the psychotropic, so the antidepressants are like that too. The PPIs on the antidepressants, when you try to get off of them, you get this rebound process. The body tries to get back into balance and it can be very difficult. So you've got to go low and slow when you're trying to taper off the PPIs or taper off antidepressant psychotropic meds.

Absolutely. Amazing. So what cases have you recalled Rosacea that you want to share that can give you a little sense of this?

Yeah, well, I had a patient who came in and she was a undiagnosed celiac, not just a gluten sensitivity. She was an undiagnosed celiac. She was Irish and she was having a standard American diet and she was self-medicating for her heartburn with over-the-counter acid blocking medications. It had a lot of bloating type symptoms and came in and, you know, her major complaint was her skin, but she had all these other things, but her big thing was how I look, right? So, people are vain and people-- It's people's attention. Exactly, right. And then when I did a dive into her testing, it turned out that she was deficient in her essential fatty acids, especially the gamma-linolenic acid. She had a lack of stomach acid because of the PPIs. You can actually measure a test, blood test, as a commercially available test called gastrin. And gastrin levels will go up when you block acid. So. And, and that's actually one of the tests that I actually like to use when I have patients from trying to get them off of a PBI, because the higher the gastrin level, the more difficult it will be to get off the PPI. And that's sort of like, it'll tell you how easy you can get off. Acid blockers.

That's a PPI.

Exactly. And then she also had low vitamin D levels. I mean, you know, we spend a lot of our time clothed and indoors, so we don't get an, way enough, enough Sunshine. That's, that's one of the big things and. Low vitamin D, you don't just fix low vitamin D. This is one of my, I get up on my soapbox all the time here, is you don't just fix low vitamin D by taking vitamin D. Vitamin D deficiency is basically a sunshine deficiency. There are certain times when there can be other causes, like you may have fat malabsorption that can cause low vitamin D or you may have problems with the synthesis because of lack of skin oils, which when you get exposed to the sun. But by and large, low vitamin D levels is related to sunshine deficiency. And it's that, you know, low vitamin D is not the problem. It's a symptom of another problem. And the immune system is also benefited by sunshine exposure, healthy sunshine. I think you said you're gonna be, you enjoy going to the tropics now and then, Caribbean, Hawaii, whatever. And we also feel good. It's also, this is another thing that I find fascinating is that there is a, a condition which is called sunshine addiction. You know these people who are like suntan addicts? Well, it turns out that our bodies actually produce endorphins when we are exposed to the sun. So, there's a feedback mechanism.

That's incredible.

Oh, yeah, yeah. There's a compound, it's called pro-opiomelanocorticotropin hormone. And what it means is that our bodies give a reward when we're in the sun. So we feel good. We have these feel-good molecules, these endorphins that make us want to get the sun.

Oh, that's interesting.

That's why I love going in the sun. Exactly. No.

And there are these people who. I always feel so good when I go to the beach in the summer.

It just makes me so happy. Exactly. And, and, and the interesting is it actually, you can get addicted to the sun. And that's like, it's like you can get addicted to food. I mean, your body needs food to survive, and your body actually needs Sunshine to survive. So our nature has built in these.

Feedback mechanisms so that it encourages us to do it. That's incredible. Yeah.

Isn't it?

Wow. So what happened with this patient? What did you do for her?

Well, I did a lot. I mean, I had her work with our nutritionist and got her off of her standard American diet. I treated her bacterial overgrowth. She had a significant SIBO test, so I treated that primarily with herbs. A lot of people will use antibiotics, things like Rifaximin or Xifaxan for SIBO. I actually find that I do just as well using antimicrobial herb preparations. I supported her stomach acid using betaine HCL. Some patients don't respond to that. They don't tolerate as well. So sometimes I'll use things like apple cider vinegar and then got her fatty acids up, gave her a little bit of borage oil and, you know, a combination of that. And then also just told her to get some healthy sunshine. It doesn't necessarily mean that you need to go out and sunbathe or go to a suntanning booth, but just getting healthy sunshine can help with down regulating the immune system. And interestingly, just off topic, but with COVID there are some really interesting studies that giving high dose vitamin D helps with COVID infections. And so COVID, vitamin D when it's at high enough levels actually helps to keep the immune system in balance. It keeps it from getting- yeah, it.

Controls hundreds of genes that regulate immune and inflammation. It's pretty amazing. It's not really a vitamin.

It's more like a hormone. Exactly. Exactly. It's like a hormone. And it's also actually acts like a steroid, too. It's a cholesterol molecule moiety. And I oftentimes, if I'm gonna come.

Down with a cold or flu, I'll up my dose of CBD, especially in the winter. Absolutely. It's true. And I, when I feel like something's coming on and I take like 50, 000 units for three or four days and I never, I never get sick. Yeah, it goes away by the next morning. It is. It's pretty powerful. So, Todd, we just covered a lot here and I recall a lot of cases of mine that have had rosacea. It's always one of those things where I love seeing because it's so easy to treat and people suffer so much from it. And just by following the functional medicine approach, looking at the root causes, treating the skin from the inside out, addressing the gut, addressing food sensitivities, addressing nutritional deficiencies, which is really the foundations of functional medicine, these people get better. And we, we don't just take it at face value.

Yeah. Good point.

But we, we actually go under the hood and look at what's going on.

Exactly.

You know, I think there was one great quote I heard. somewhere that traditional medicine is like trying to diagnose what's wrong with your car by listening to the noises it makes instead of looking under the hood. Exactly. And functional medicine is about looking under the hood. Absolutely. And here at the Ultra Wellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, we've been doing this for decades. We have the most incredible team here who collectively have probably 70 years of clinical experience in functional medicine. And we're doing most of our care virtually now. So wherever you live in the world, we can take care of you using virtual Zoom consults. And it's pretty gratifying to see how many people are taking advantage of that and getting better. And I think that this is a challenging moment for everybody. And I think we often neglect our own health and our own healthcare. Nobody wants to go to the doctor, nobody wants to go to the hospital anymore. But I think people can get virtual care now, which is super awesome. And we invite you to check it out. You go to ultrawellnesscenter.com if you're suffering from any skin disorder, whether it's acne or acne rosacea or eczema or psoriasis. We've had some podcasts on that. Go listen to them. But this is really an approach that works for skin disorders. I love skin problems because they are so easy to treat whether, like I said, it's eczema, acne, rosacea, whatever it is, it's pretty striking. And it's just heartbreaking to see how many patients struggle with these conditions because they're often so embarrassing. That's one thing. If you have, you know, bacterial overgrowth and bloating, you're the only one who knows your stomach's bloated. Right. But if you've got this nasty looking or skin issues, you don't want to be seen like that. And, I think this affects people's sense of well-being and their self-worth. And, I just want to blow out there is really clear approaches that helped us.

And, the exciting thing is, it's a lot of the conferences that I go to, there are now functional medicine dermatologists who get it. Because most dermatologists do not realize or remember that the skin and the gut are contiguous. They're connected. connected. So, when you have a skin problem, it's oftentimes an internal problem. And, the functional medicine dermatologists which are.

You know, growing are getting that and they're really helpful. Yeah, I agree. It is one of the most exciting parts of functional medicine is dermatology because it's like, oh, it's such a slam dunk. And, there are a number of really great functional medicine doctors out there who are dermatologists. And, you know, the stories are amazing. I just, see so many people suffer on this.

Unnecessarily.

Exactly. So if you've been loving this podcast and you know someone with a skin problem or you've got a skin problem, come see us here, share it with your friends and family on social media, leave a comment. We'd love to hear how you've addressed your skin issues, what's worked, what hasn't worked. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and we'll see you next time on the Doctor's Pharmacy.