47: How To Get Glowing Skin: The Gut – Skin Connection with Jackie Bowker 

I love finding out what is going on in the microbiome so that we can really tailor a plan to make sure that we can clear the 16 year old skin. But what’s important is that that was a motivation, period settings process. It was so interesting, we run really thorough functional medicine assessments where I know before I even see you, I get I know what’s going on in the stomach and the small intestine in the large intestine with parasites. What’s beautiful about that process is filling out questionnaires like that connects you to your intuition. And this boy sat in front of me and said to his mom, that it was so wonderful filling out the surveys because he never actually realized that feeling this way, feeling that tightness in your stomach, feeling the horrible sensation in his gut, moving from constipation to diarrhea. He never knew anything other than that that was normal for him. So it was so validating is so motivating, so inspiring to know that there is an answer to why my skin might be imbalanced why I might be having pimples. Hi there. Welcome to the feel better now podcast. I’m your host, Jackie Belka. And if you’ve arrived here, no, there is something in here to spark yourself to create a better future, in your health, in your career in your relationships for both yourself. And for those around you just one small action step at a time. With so much love and gratitude to be your guide. Let’s get started. Jackie back on my Kindle is related to my gut. Hello, everybody. Super excited to be here talking about one of my favorite topics, which is a personalized nutrition. I love helping people to really dial in their diet wherever they are at. I’ll give you an example. In the clinic today, I was working with a beautiful 16 year old boy and his mom, the boy presented with acne on his face. And that was his primary concern for coming in. When you have acne, it really affects your body confidence. from a functional perspective, it’s a great symptom because it’s a time where you are willing to make some changes because it does really affect you and you want your skin to be smooth and plump and shiny and not embarrassing or beat her name to cover up my 11 year old had his first big pimple this week. And the poor thing he was so embarrassed for school, he was covering his face with his mouth. So no one notice all his friends. The first thing they said when they saw him was Oh, you got a pimple, which made things all the all the same worse. And he was coming home saying to me, Why have I got a pimple, there is a reason that we get pimples and they can be hormonal a lot of the time they can also be related to the gut. So back to my 16 year old boy, we had run a DNA stool tests to find out what was really going on. Because the skin is the second biggest organ and is directly connected to what is going on in our gut and with our microbiome. Did you know that we are more bacteria than we are human. We have 40,000 species of bacteria, 2 million genes of bacteria and even more of parasites and fungi and protozoa and viruses. So the point is, I love finding out what is going on in the microbiome so that we can really tailor a plan to make sure that we can clear the 16 year old skin. But what’s important is that that was a motivation for him starting this process. It was so interesting, we run really thorough functional medicine assessments where I know before I even see you, I know what’s going on in the stomach and the small intestine in the large intestine with parasites. What’s beautiful about that process is filling out questionnaires like that connects you to your intuition. And this boy sat in front of me and said to his mom, that it was so wonderful filling out these surveys because he never actually realized that feeling this way feeling that tightness in your stomach, feeling the horrible sensation in his gut, moving from constipation to diarrhea. He never knew anything other than that that was normal for him. So it was so validating is so motivating, so inspiring to know that there is an answer to why my skin might be imbalanced to why I might be having pimples. So the scary thing is when we looked in at the DNA saw test we saw a wildly leaky gut. Think of the gut as a doughnut along donut. One of my mentors, Dr. Tim O’Brien talks about the concept of the doughnut. And the doughnut is think of the the Think of the intestines like a big long tube of a doughnut. The Doughnut has perforations and they’re supposed to be small enough just to allow nutrients to cross over and send those nutrients to where they need to be in the body for you to thrive. The holes the perforation They’re not supposed to be gaping holes in the donor wall, allowing waste product and bacteria into the bloodstream and worse, dirty blood back into the tube of the doughnut. So we don’t want either of those situations. This 16 year old boy had that he had the wild leaky gut. I asked him, when was the last time you ate wheat because I can see you have a huge sensitivity to wheat. Every morning for breakfast, he loves having his cornflakes. He loves eating lots of bread. But I knew this coming in, because I could see a massive overgrowth of bacteria, which we call dysbiosis, which is the bad bacteria is that critters are stronger than the good critters, think of your bacteria. Like you’ve got a good army and a bad army. And we really want to booster the good army. So he had very low levels of good bacteria, and very, very high levels of bad bacteria. And what happens all that bread, all that passer is not. It’s not just the mums said oh, he’s having a growth spurt. And absolutely that can be the case. But all of that growth, all of the sugar that has been consumed because the bread and the pasta turn into sugar in the body, all of that is being consumed by the bacteria. Whereas he was eating and thinking he was trying to pump up he was trying to put on weight he was trying to put on a few kilos or he was trying to put on weight. And I explained to him, the reason that you are craving all of this brand and pass it is twofold. The first is that your gut bacteria, your bad bacteria are so strong, then gobbling up all of this sugar, the bread turning into the sugar in the body. And the second it is perpetuating you having blood sugar dysregulation. So you’re basically running on sugar all day, you eat the bread, you eat the cereal in the morning, the level of sugar goes up in your bloodstream, your body can’t handle it. So you get a big blood sugar dip an hour later, you’re starving again. So you eat something else, you might eat a sandwich, the level of sugar in the blood goes up again, and so on. So you’re like a roller coaster all day. Now this boy was trying to put on weight. So we talked about turning him into being a dual fuel system. Think of yourself as a hybrid car. And we need to be able to move from one fuel system to the other fuel system easily. We cannot just run on one fuel, which is sugar. We can’t just run on that all day. This boy was heading into the most important year of school of his life. So he needed concentration. He needed focus. He needed his creativity. Yet all of this was collapsing beneath him. When I looked at him, his skin was pink and his eyes were all inflamed. And as I was talking to him about what his goals were, then he said to me out of the blue. Oh yeah, I have absolutely no energy at one o’clock in the day. I’m done. One o’clock in the day for a 16 year old child. I mean, this is what I worry about. I worry about the future generation of our children. What are we doing to turn this around? This is a paradigm shift that we need. One of my mentors, JJ virgin taught me that a rising tide lifts all boats, we have to work together to change the food that we’re eating. So the three of us the mom, the boy and myself, we brainstormed. All right, what are the foods that you’re going to enjoy? What are the foods that you can have for breakfast, instead of cereal, which you love and you love it? It’s not you, the bacteria love it. And your blood sugar is dysregulated. So of course you’re going to want that sugar, but that’s okay. There’s a process of balance of blood sugar and you 16 you’re young enough that that balances really, really quickly the body wants so desperately to heal with the right input. And he already has a beautiful supportive mother that’s more that has real food at home that’s modeling these behaviors herself. So we brainstorm. Okay, so this boy loves eggs. He has the ability he knows how to make an omelet. I thought that was amazing. So he loves an omelet with spinach. And that was easy. It’s an easy breakfast for him to have in the morning. He loves boiled eggs as well. We talked about smoothies. He loves smoothies. So in the smoothie, we can put lots and lots of fiber, lots of fruits and veggies and make the smoothie tastes really good. He wanted to he wanted to beef up a little bit, put on a few kilos so we can make sure we’ve got adequate protein in there. So we talked about the right protein to really build that lean muscle mass and then the fat source so that we can start to turn into that dual fuel system balance our blood sugar. And imagine starting the day with an omelette I said this Imagine starting the day with an omelet and your smoothie and how you’re going to feel moving through the day rather than starting the day with a box cereal which honestly has the nutrient value of cardboard. So we have to and I’m talking about a box cereal where that’s not like a grain free paleo granola or something I’m talking about a standard commercialized box cereal. You know in functional medicine we call these pseudo foods they’re fake foods you look at the ingredients and you know anything are usually the first three ingredients, sugar or names of ingredients that are a actually just sugar mass in a different name like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. So and then we talked about moving through the day. So he loves things like meats and rice, we talked about a good quality rice, organic rice, organic basmati rice, soy. Rice carries a lot of arsenic. So it is really important if you’re having rice one that you can tolerate it to that you get a really good quality rice and that it’s prepared properly. So we talked about at dinner the mom serves generally protein and vegetables that we carve out a separate meal in a takeaway for him to take to school. He was super happy with that. So in 10 minutes, we had brainstorm completely reformulated his diet. He was completely bought into the process. He understood that he had huge amounts of inflammation that I could see in his bowel dysbiosis histroy, his bad bacteria was stronger than his good bacteria, I could see he had a wild leaky gut, and that he was having a huge sensitivity to weight. So when we take the fuel off the fire, when we take the inflammatory foods out of the diet, we allow the body the space to heal, he was already in a great sleep, he’s already drinking amazing amounts of water. His mom already had really good quality real foods at home fruits and veggies and quality fats like avocado and olives and nuts and seeds. We talked about if he wanted to put on weight, we’d bulk him out with starchy veggies, and nuts, as opposed to chips and chocolate and breads. He understood that this approach was going to clear his skin, this approach was going to take the tightness out of his stomach, this approach was going to balance his stalls. And then it came out through the conversation with his fatigue. This approach was turning him into a dual fuel system where he could run on a long lasting fuel and lasts through the day beyond 1pm, which is so important heading into the final year at school. I work with entrepreneurs and leaders, whether you’re a leader of business or at home, we need you to have energy and vitality. I want the children of our future to have the energy and vitality to get through the day to make the kids here these days, you’ve seen them my 11 year old place so much sport, he’s up at five in the morning, he’s going to running training, he’s got NFL training, he’s got AFL training, they swim for an hour at a time, and then he goes to school all day, I can’t have his duck be imbalanced because the bacteria we are more bacteria than we are human are bacteria manage everything in the body. This episode was to Hello wherever you are in your journey, there’s always a way to get to your desired transformation. One small action step at the time, dial in your diet one bit of time work out how you can turn into a fat burning machine. So that you have the focus, you have the creativity so you can get through the day with loads of energy so that you can have the clear skin so that your gut is completely balanced again. And this process I explained to this boy, what’s going to happen is that you are going to be able to tune into your beautiful intuition, you’re going to be able to make decisions with confidence. We talked about an exam that he had had, and that he wanted to be confident in his marks going into his exams. The confidence comes when your gut when your microbiome is balanced because your intuition that’s the Epi Center of your intuition. I would love to know if this resonates with you. I read every single comment and review. And if you haven’t looked at what’s going on and you got please do this, so many clues that your body is sending you that things may or may not be imbalanced. We’ve always got ways to take tiny action steps forward so that you can feel better and better and better. I’ll see you next week. Bye bye. If you made it to the end of this episode, celebrate yourself because it means you are truly dedicated to feeling better in your health, in your career in your relationships. And I am so proud of you. And if you want more of the feel better now so tune in every Monday for new episodes and join our community on Instagram at Jackie Belka for all the behind the scenes action and more. Hey, why don’t you sign up for a chance to have your question answered at feel better institute.com/sign up that feel better institute.com/sign up but most of all, please keep reaching to feel better because the world needs you to feel good so you can share that very special gift that only you have. So with that said, See you soon. Here’s to feeling better. Now Jackie Baca