Clean Your Skin from Within with Trevor Cates

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Hey, it's JJ Virgin. And welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show where we'll connect with some of the coolest people in the world. Plus, I give you tips that you can put into fast action to up level your health and your life. Now, today's show is all about glowing skin and aging gracefully. Actually, I like to call it de aging and I've got someone great to talk about, gosh, stuff I wish I'd known decades before. It's actually I got into nutrition because I was battling my skin. So you can imagine this is quite the hot button for me. And we are going to talk about not just how to make your skin look better, but more importantly, why this is actually a reflection of your overall health. So let me tell you a little bit about our guest today. It's Dr. Trevor Cates. She is a naturopathic doctor out in Park City, Utah. Awesome place. She's known as the Spa Doctor. She was actually the first woman licensed as a naturopathic doctor in the state of California. She was appointed by former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to California's Bureau of Naturopathic Medicine Advisory Council. She's worked in some amazing spas. When I met her, she was working at the St. Regis up in Deer Valley and has just been doing incredible things with skin for years. She's been featured on the Doctors Extra first for Women, Mind Body Green. And she's a host of the Spa Doctor podcast show which you'll definitely want to tune into because she has a great approach for how to look at skin both from your diet and from what you put onto it. And we're going to be talking about some super, super cool things that you will want to do immediately and you'll want to avoid and go go do an overhaul of your medicine cabinet. Plus, she's developed a quiz I'm going to have her tell you about where she talks about how to identify your skin types. You know exactly what to do both with what you eat and what you put on to make your skin its most awesome. She's got a really great book coming out. I've had the chance to review it called Clean Skin from Within along with the public television show. And she's got some amazing skin care products that I've been using as well. So I'm super excited to have Dr. Trevor Cates with us today. All right, let's do it. Dr. Trevor. Trevor Cates, welcome to the show. I'm so glad you're here with me today.

Thanks, jj. It's so great to be here.

One of my favorite subjects of all time, of course, is how to have amazing skin. And look, you know, I was always, like, 10 years younger. Now I think I'm going for more. The older I get, the more years I put in there. So, you know, I wanted to have you here today to talk to. Talk how to. I. I like to think of it as de aging. And, of course, a lot of that starts with your skin. And you have such a cool, different approach because you're a naturopathic doctor, so you're kind of inside out and outside in. And one of the things that I know. And now knowing you for, gosh, like, what, five years or so, it's been a while. First of all, I have no idea how old you are. You look 25. I know that couldn't be because I've seen your daughters, but you call our skin the magic mirror. What do you mean?

Yeah, I love looking at skin as the magic mirror because it gives us great clues about our overall health. Our skin is our largest organ, and it's right on the surface of our bodies. So when we think about organs, a lot of times we think, okay, to check it out, we need special imaging equipment. We need X rays or special CT scans, something like that. But with our skin, it's our largest organ. It's right on the surface. So it gives us great clues. And all you have to do is look in the mirror and know what's going on with your skin, and it gives you great clues about your internal health, what's going on inside your body.

So what? It was super frustrating for me growing up, and I don't think you know this. So from, like, the age of 11, my skin started breaking out. And literally, I went to dermatologist after dermatologist. I'd been on Accutane multiple times, antibiotics, all sorts of, like, you name it, I've been there, done that. None of it really worked. I mean, it would, like, work, and then it would stop working. And scarring, I mean, just was awful. And never once did one doctor say to me anything about diet. Never once. And it was kind of what got me started in all this. Early on, unfortunately, I went the wrong route because they always talk about, oh, it's fried foods and chocolate, you know, and in reality, though, that it was sugar and dairy. But it is amazing to me that they don't talk about what you're eating. I mean, what's. What's the deal with. With these dermatologists out there?

Right? I know. And I had, as a child, I had a lot of skin issues, too. Mine were more allergic types of reactions of eczema and hives and these little bumps on my skin all the time. And. And the dermatologist, you know, it was all about what can we do to suppress it on the outside. But they were never really looking for the root cause of what's going on inside the body that's actually triggering the issues in the first place. Well, I have some great dermatologist friends, and I'm not going to do that.

This wasn't a bash of a dermatologist. That was not a bash. Although, you know, it is kind of crazy. Just go, okay, what do we need to do to cover this up or get it to heal rather than, like, what do we need to do to get this not to keep happening? Right. I'm sure it's not a shortage of Accutane. I'm sure I didn't have an Accutane or antibiotic deficiencies. No.

No steroid deficiency, nothing like that. Yeah, it's a matter of looking for the root cause. And I think, I feel like that's oftentimes what's missing in the conventional approach to skin issues is that we're too quick to just put on an antibiotic cream or steroid cream or take antibiotics or something that just to suppress it without really figuring out what's going on. And I feel like we're missing an opportunity to look at skin as our magic mirror. That's giving us clues. Because oftentimes if there's something that's out of balance that's causing a skin issue, there's some sort of trigger there, and it's going to affect your health in some other ways. And so, for example, if someone has eczema and they're just covering it up, covering up, suppressing, suppressing, and they're not looking for the root cause, then their eczema might go away temporarily because of the steroid treatment or whatever the treatment is, but it might show up in some other health issue. So I've seen that show up, as is asthma, for example, or an autoimmune disease. So something that could be even more detrimental, detrimental to your health. So that's why I feel like when you look at your skin and you notice that something is not quite right. That's the opportunity to dig a little deeper, find out why it's happening. And when we address that, you're going to help your skin clear up. You're going to look younger and your health is going to improve overall. You're going to see, I mean, and I saw this, I've seen this over and over again in my practice where people, you know, their energy level improves, their weight improves, they get more to their ideal weight and you get to the root causes. Because if we're looking at things of the root causes are things like hormone imbalances. That's a big issue for skin problems. If you have hormone imbalances, it's going to show up on your skin. It's also going to show up in your health in other ways also. Blood sugar issues, nutritional deficiencies, microbiome issues. Those are some of the things that we look for, we really want to look for when we're looking at the skin.

So skin's just another way to look, to see how your health is doing. And what, what kind of things should we be looking for on our skin? I mean, I know my obvious one was, you know, cystic acne. And I'm sure there's psoriasis, eczema, hives, rashy things, but what else, what other things should we look for?

Right. And I think it's a great opportunity. Before you, first thing in the morning, before you put, if you're a woman, before you put on or before you go about your day, take a look at your skin in the mirror and don't be hard on yourself. Of course, this is just a tool to find out information. Take a look at your skin, how does it look? And I think if you notice it changes on a day to day basis, maybe you have a chronic skin issue or maybe you just look in the mirror and you notice your skin happens to be really dry or dull and pale. These kinds of signs can be really great at helping us figure out something that we've done isn't quite right. Or maybe you look in the mirror and you've broken out. Maybe you have acne along your chin or you broke out on the side of your mouth or something like that. You know, these are signs that your body is giving you. And you know, with acne, for example, there's probably something in your diet that you just ate. I mean, you know, jj, I'm sure you're very aware of your skin and being prone to acne. Like when you eat sugar and things like that, you probably break Out, Right. So you look in the mirror and you're like, wait, what did I just eat? Was there something hiding in my. In what I was eating when I went out to eat that I wasn't aware of? Right. So it's just a tool for us to use.

Well, what are you seeing as the top foods? Because it took me.

I hate.

It took me decades to figure out the food triggers, which makes me nuts. It's one of the reasons that I've, you know, written the books that I've written. I was like, going, this is like, I don't want anyone to go through this like I went through. I mean, it just shouldn't happen. What are you seeing as. As if someone is struggling with acne or psoriasis, eczema rosacea. What are some of the key foods that you would tell them to stay away from?

Okay, well, jj, this is not going to surprise you, probably, and you're probably going to be somewhat happy to hear this, is that the number one food that triggers skin issues is sugar.

The number one food that triggers health issues is sugar. I think, you know, you've made this big leap that I really want everyone to hear is that one of the fastest ways to look at your health is to look at your skin. That's such an important, great message. And so if it's something that's hurting your skin, guess what it's hurting. If it's hurting your skin, it's hurting your health. That your skin's not this benign thing that's on, you know, that you're putting makeup on. That is not the case. So I love that you're saying that. Okay, so sugar. Yay.

Yeah. So when it comes to sugar, the reason why it's a problem for skin, I'm going to give you some examples of why it's not good for. For skin and that. So with. With sugar, when we eat a lot of sugar, it increases our blood sugar, which increases insulin, and increases in insulin will trigger sebum production, the oils in our skin, as well as androgen activity. So those that excess sebum production and androgen activity are two of the big things that trigger acne breakouts. So people are wondering, why is it that when I eat sugar, I break out and acne? Well, there's your answer. There's a physiologic reason for you breaking out. It's not just some random idea, some sort of weird thought process. There's a reason behind it.

So what about besides sugar, what are some of the other ones?

Well, before we move on to another food. I do want to mention too that with sugar, one of the other big issues is it creates glycation issues. So glucose will bind to proteins in the body and that includes collagen. And collagen on our skin is what gives it that, that firmness and helps hold it up. And so if we eat too much sugar, then that glucose is going to bind to collagen and cause it to be more rigid, less elastic and make it wrinkle and going to age so much faster. If you're eating a high sugar diet.

I am so glad you brought that one up because it makes me nuts to see people eating like you know, the, the light yogurt with, or it's the lowfat yogurt with the fruit with the sugar on the bottom like it's some kind of healthy snack. And then they're putting on like a, a youth serum. I'm like you using that's not going to work, you know. So I'm glad you brought that up. Those skinny lattes, those, those low fat muffins, all the stuff that you're doing in an effort to eat healthy that are loaded with sugar that just age you faster.

Yeah. And it's really any food that has a high glycemic index, which you know, help one, any of those foods that spike your blood sugar are going to cause a similar kind of reaction. So we all careful with anything, you know, processed foods, a lot of carb grain, sugary grains, processed foods, those kinds of things are not going to be good. And so that's kind of in that category together. And then the other food, the other big one that I see with skin issues, and this can be acne and eczema, psoriasis, a number of different skin issues is dairy, dairy products. And the worst of them for acne is skim milk, but really it's all dairy products. And I think sometimes people say to me, oh, but I can't give up my dairy products. And then I say, well just try for two weeks. And if your skin doesn't clear up, then maybe it's not dairy, but it's definitely worth at least a trial period with sugar and dairy. And there's some other foods too. And I know you've talked about food elimination and reintroduction diets too. And this is a big part of the things that I talk about in my book Clean Skin from Within is how to take these foods out of your diet, how to replace them with the foods that actually nourish your skin instead and address those root causes that are holding you back from having that clear, glowing skin.

Now I know you hit this both ways. So you have in your book, and your book is Clean Skin from Within. I know you have like how you should be eating, what you should be looking for, all the different underlying causes. But then the other part of it is what you put on. I know you have created your own skincare line. What I love to hear from you is what are some of the things that people should never put on their face no matter what?

You know, there are so many products out there that people use on a day to day basis. On, on average we, we're using nine to 12 different personal care products on a day to day basis. This exposes us to over 126 unique ingredients. And the problem is, is that the FDA does not regulate skincare products very well. Not like other countries do. In Europe they've banned over a thousand ingredients and skincare products, while in the United States they've only banned 11 ingredients. And so we really, it's really up to the consumer, us to look at our skincare products, our personal care products and be aware of what we're putting on our skin because there are a lot of health issues and concerns about these. So one of the things that's in so many products, even some so called natural products, is synthetic fragrance. And fragrance is an opportunity when fragrance is put in personal care products. And I know people do it, we do it because we want to smell good. I get it, I understand. But the problem is people, manufacturers put the word fragrance on the label. Opportunity for them to hide a lot of ingredients that don't have to be listed on the label. And one of those is called diethyl phthalate. It's a type of phthalate or plasticizing agent that's known to have hormone disrupting effects. Now here we are, we're getting, you know, none of us are getting any younger, we're all getting older. Our hormones are getting further out of balance. The last thing we want to do is put hormone disrupting chemicals on our face. So we want to be using alternatives like natural essential oils. We have these great essential oils are such a better alternative to synthetic fragrance. And all the downsides of those.

Wow. You know, it's one of those things that you look so benign too. And that's, that's the important thing is these things look like no big deal. You know, that doesn't look like a big chemical name that we'd be afraid of. So those are the Ones that concern me the most is you just kind of skip over it and think it's fine. What are like three of your favorite ingredients to put into skin care?

My favorite ingredients? Well, you know, there's so many great ingredients. I would say some of my favorites are aloe. Aloe is just super healing to the skin and people oftentimes they think of it for burns or, you know, trauma to the skin. But it's, if you think about it, our skin is getting traumatized. It's getting exposure to sun and different elements every single day. So it's good to have ingredients that actually nourish and, and soothe the skin. Like aloe or arnica is another one that I love to see in skincare products. Those are some of the products that we use in the spa doctors Daily essentials. Also there's some great oils like sea buckthorn fruit oil and argan oil and cranberry seed extract and pomegranate. These are great ingredients to have antioxidants, ingredients that actually nourish the skin and protect it. So instead of using synthetic ingredients that just sit on your skin and might make it look good while you have it on your skin. But the problem is with the synthetic ingredients, the second you wash it off, when you wash off that dimethicone or those petroleum products, the mineral oil, as soon as you wash it off, it's not doing anything for your skin. It hasn't actually helped improve your skin and unfortunately it's probably just been exposing you to harmful toxins. So instead, using natural ingredients like this in their active form is going to make your skin improve in a long run and also look good in the short term and protect your health.

Yeah, that's the most important is like, this is not just a matter of, of, you know, making your skin look better so you look better. This is actually your overall health, that your skin's just a reflection of everything. So I love that whole concept of magic mirror. Now I want to throw a curveball at you and ask you the big question. What's the one thing you do every day that you think makes the biggest difference in your life?

Well, you know, I always look at skin as a two part thing. I look for, I look at it as what are you doing internally, externally? And I think that, you know, as a naturopathic physician, I've been in practice for 17 years now and I know that our skin, I feel like 80% of it is what we eat and the lifestyle choices we make, the stress management, exercise, all of that helps our Skin, but also there's that 20%, that's actually what we put on our skin. And that's why I created my skincare line, Spot Actors skincare line, because I realized that we want to use things on our face every day. And that's when I, after turning 40, I realized I couldn't just get by with a healthy diet. I mean, that was a big part of it. But I needed to use some skincare products that actually helped keep my skin looking youthful. And I think that that's one of the biggest things that's helped me in this, you know, in my 40s and to continue to have healthy looking and youthful looking skin is using my skincare products. And I use all four steps twice a day. And I never was one before I created my own skincare line. I was never really one to use a lot of skincare products. And so when I did a lot of research creating these, the skincare line, I realized what I was missing out on. So I would say that's one of the biggest things I'm doing now that maybe I didn't used to do.

So big approach that I want everyone to hear is it's yes, you know, what you put on makes a big difference. What you put in makes the biggest difference. You got to do all of these things and the most aging thing that you can do is go eat a bunch of sugar and be stressed out. So this all works together. And that's why you, honestly, you look like you're 30, 25. It's like, you know, it's crazy. So I want to send everyone you've created that cool quiz and tell everyone about this quiz that you've got.

Yeah, well, a lot of times people ask me, ask me, okay, so what is my root cause? Because I talk about this. You got to find out your root cause. If you want to have clear, glowing, youthful looking skin, you've got to find out your root causes and address those. And so instead of, because I can't see everybody in my practice, people all around the world, so I created this quiz, a skin quiz. And it helps you identify. Just, it's 10 questions and you find out what your root causes are. And I've created five different skin types and each of these skin types have their own unique combination of underlying causes. And so you can finally figure out what's going on with your skin. You can find. It's a different kind of approach and I really hope people will check it out because it's going to give you some great information. I talk about it in my book, too, about how to really address these root causes and what to do when you find out your skin type.

Well, everybody's got to find out their skin type. I look at this, I'm like, where the heck were you? I mean, when I needed you back 30 years ago, darn it, you were 10. You hadn't figured it out yet. So you can get your quiz done. And this is again, you want to know what's going on so you know exactly how to do it. I love it when you can test and not guess at things so you can get your quiz done. All you need to do is go to jjvirgin.com forward/doctor Cates. And that's spelled D, R, C, A, T, E, S, Dr. Cates. Plus you're also going to put there. We're going to have the foods to eat cheat sheet. What is that?

Yeah, that's the best and worst foods to eat. It's the cheat sheet on these because I know we covered a couple of the worst foods to eat. We didn't get a chance to talk about the best foods for skin. So you'll see more of the the worst foods and then exactly why that is and then also the best foods to eat for your skin.

And I have a feeling we're pretty simpatico in our worst foods to eat here. So this won't be new information, but maybe it'll be the push you need to finally drop the damn dairy. I said it there. Anyway, so you've got a great book coming out. I want to let everyone know to make sure you grab clean skin comes from within. You'll have a public television show. You'll be able to check out Dr. Trevor Cates on. And I want to thank you so much for joining me today, Trevor.

Thank you, jj. It's so great to be here. Thanks for all that you're doing to get great information out there.

Got to get out there. This is one of my hot buttons because I suffered for so darn long and you don't have to. And that's what's frustrating. And I see so many people doing all these things to try to be younger. And, you know, I haven't seen someone address it well like you do. So I'm super excited to get this information out. And thank you so much for being with me. Now after the break, I'll be answering a listener's question, so stick with me.

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Welcome back. This is the time where I answer a listener's question and I'm grabbing these questions, by the way, from my Facebook page. You can go to facebook.com JJVirginOfficial and leave a question for me there. And what I my goal is always to try to match them up as well as I can with the show. So I love the question today. It's from Mary Beth in Sioux City, Iowa. And I get this question all the time though, and I can relate. I actually used to ask this question too. And she says, jj, I know in the virgin diet and in the sugar impact diet, you talk about dumping the dairy, but I really, really love to have just a little bit of milk in my coffee every morning. Is a little bit really going to cause a problem? All right, Mary Beth, hey, I'm going to tell you a story about what happened with me and this will make.

You really relate to this.

So I love dairy. I mean all things, all things dairy. And back in the fat free craze, I was doing fat free frozen yogurt, fat free milk, fat free cheese, which is one of the grossest inventions ever should should be just outlawed. All of these things battling my skin as I talked about in this podcast. I mean, I had skin issues for decades that went away in literally days when I dumped the dairy. I'd always had the sugar down. Of course, dairy's unfortunately high sugar impact, especially skim milk, which is probably why that's so problematic. So I did a food sensitivity test and this is what finally put me over the edge. And I've done a lot of food sensitivity testing. I've looked at a lot of people's test results and what I've seen is that 70% of people seem to react to dairy or eggs or both. And I was one of those people reacting to dairy. Now here's what was crazy about it. By that time, I'd taken it down to having the teensiest bit of skim milk in my coffee in my Americanos every day. Just a teeny bit, right? And that teeny bit was keeping me bloated and broken out. See, the challenge is when you don't, when you're intolerant to something, the littlest bit can cause a big reaction. And that's why. And you heard Dr. Trevor say it too, just pull it out for two weeks. And that's when I see with people is generally within the first couple of days, they're going to see a massive shift in their skin. In fact, when you go on the virgin diet, one of the biggest changes you start to see immediately besides joint pain and bloating is shifts in your skin. Same with the sugar impact diet. Both of those things are built to slow down the aging process. I call it de aging. And to clear up up your skin fast. And you heard Dr. Cates talk about the impact of diet on your skin. So the deal is, Mary Beth. Yes, you have to give it up. And come on. There's so many easy alternatives to put into your coffee. First of all, you could have a block. You could bulletproof it and do it with ghee. You'd want to use grass fed ghee, not straight butter and put coconut oil in it. Or you could use coconut milk, almond milk, cashew milk, flax milk. Just make sure any of those things are sugar free. I mean, there's never been more options than now. So I'm going to challenge you and challenge everyone listening. If you're struggling with your skin at all, struggling with joint pain, autoimmune issues, bloating, weight loss, resistance, dump the dairy for at least a couple weeks and then go back and try it and see how you feel. And I very rarely see someone who doesn't feel better when they've gotten that out. All right, if you'd like to submit a question again, pop over to my Facebook page and I'm pulling things off there all the time. Plus I'm doing fun Facebook lives and I'd love you to join in there. We do fun giveaways and have cool guests. And I also have a favor to ask. I would so appreciate if you jump over to Stitcher or itunes and leave a review for me. It helps a bunch. Remember to subscribe. Subscribe and share the show with your friends. Alrighty. This is JJ Virgin signing off and reminding you to live courageously. Show up, step up. You are stronger than you think.

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