Revealing the Root Cause of Autoimmune Skin Conditions
Episode 179
We’ve talked about skin conditions in previous episodes of Integrative Wellness Radio. But today specifically we’ll be taking a deep dive into the autoimmune aspect of skin conditions along with our host Dr. Nicole. Autoimmune skin conditions manifest when your body’s natural defense system starts attacking the body's healthy skin cells, which is generally because of an underlying autoimmune disorder. Dr. Nicole will dissect the main components that lead to a weakened immune system and types of autoimmune skin conditions with case studies in her clinical practice. Listen to the end of the episode to better understand your body and what it needs. Interested in learning more about Dr. Nick & Dr. Nicole’s courses, memberships, or private work? Learn more at Integrative You . Have a quick question, Would you like to schedule a call, or just want to say hi? Text us at 732.913.0009. Our mission to innovate humans & Healthcare does NOT start and stop with us! This is why we are also dedicated to helping other practitioners in evolving healthcare too! If you are a healthcare leader and are looking to up-level your clinical + business excellence Learn more about our course membership: Limitless Healthprenuer and start boldly disrupting this industry! Noteworthy Time Stamps: 08:08 It’s not always about your skin only 11:54 Emotions affect your skin 20:13 Lymphatic system works hand in hand with your skin 27:15 What messes up your collagen and connective tissue?
Topics: skin, autoimmune, conditions, immune, system, unknown, nicole, understand
Key takeaways from this episode
- ## Revealing the Root Cause of Autoimmune Skin Conditions
- Autoimmune skin conditions arise when the immune system targets healthy skin tissue, often linked to broader autoimmune disorders.
- Factors contributing to a weakened immune system that can lead to skin issues will be discussed.
- Learn about specific types of autoimmune skin conditions and their manifestations.
- Clinical case studies provide practical examples of how these conditions present and are approached.
Pull quotes
Imagine if medicine actually looked at you as a whole opposed to looking at you as a bunch of separate systems.
Nick and Dr. **Unknown:** Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine, to learn about what the limitations are with testing, and what you can do to start your health journey.
But really just helping you guys to understand the bigger picture as to why these things manifest in the first place, and how they could be tied to things that are completely off of your radar.
Transcript
**Unknown:** I been up all night, no sleep. Imagine if medicine actually looked at you as a whole opposed to looking at you as a bunch of separate systems. Dive into Integrative Wellness Radio with Dr. Nick and Dr.
**Unknown:** Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine, to learn about what the limitations are with testing, and what you can do to start your health journey. Sometimes I tend to lose myself when I'm out here on the- Hello, everyone. Welcome to our weekly ... So today we are talking all about autoimmune skin conditions.
**Unknown:** So we've been talking about skin conditions, and we're just gonna really start digging into the autoimmune component to skin conditions, and gonna bring you some like really, really interesting things that I've seen coming through my practice even just recently. But really just helping you guys to understand the bigger picture as to why these things manifest in the first place, and how they could be tied to things that are completely off of your radar. You know, diet is really just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to these skin conditions, and especially autoimmune conditions as a whole. So we'll be scratching the surface on that, but really helping you to understand that it's a lot more than just cutting things out of your diet, and it's a lot more than just, you know, taking specialized supplements.
**Unknown:** There's a lot of other layers that could potentially be missed, especially when you're not doing the right testing. So tonight it's all about, uh, continuing the conversation with skin conditions, but specifically today we're gonna be talking about autoimmune skin conditions. Everything from ... I know we talked about psoriasis, which is falling in that category, but we're also gonna be talking about things like vitiligo as well.
**Unknown:** So we really wanna understand that just because you may have psoriasis, you may have vitiligo, you may have some other type of autoimmune skin condition, the origin of these autoimmune skin conditions all can come from a similar place because this is an immune system issue. Even though it is attacking the skin or affecting the skin, I should say, there is going to be this common denominator of what the heck is stressing your immune system out so much that it is causing it to be so overreactive that it is starting to compromise the integrity of your skin. So there's a lot of reasons why we have this, this ac- overactivation of our immune systems. But in traditional or conventional medicine, we're talking about a dermatologist versus an immunologist, and this is personally one of, I think one of the sh- biggest shortcomings when it comes to medicine, is that we are segregating out systems, and we are assuming that everything is working independently of each other.
**Unknown:** And I feel like unfortunately, you know, in school I always questioned things. I always felt like things didn't make sense. I'm like, "So you're telling me that there's a skin condition, but, you know, you only look at the skin but you're not actually looking at what's happening internally that could be causing an effect on the skin?" And this is the way medical training is, is that we segregate out the systems, and it's very few physicians that actually know how everything communicates with each other. So because of the nature of my personality, I kept challenging these things, and I kept asking better questions because really, at the end of the day, it didn't make a ton of sense to me that we were looking at the body in this way specifically.
**Unknown:** So for me, I don't just work with patients that have skin conditions. I work with a lot of different types of cases because it's not necessarily about the symptoms, it's about what is the root cause of the symptoms, and it's really about understanding the layers and being able to peel back those layers using better testing. So many of you might be like, "It's my skin. I know it's my skin," or, you know, "I know that it's this," or, "It has to be this," and, "Everybody in my family has this, so it has to be genetic." But at the end of the day, you're trying different things to target your so-called diagnosis, but you're not getting anywhere, and you're not getting anywhere because you're potentially treating a symptom and you're not treating the cause.
**Unknown:** So when you do better testing and you look at the body as an integration, that's really when you see the magic happen. So you're able to really uncover what is the true problem here, and then you usually find that the skin is the aftermath of the things that are going on internally in the body. So when it comes to looking at the body from an integrative perspective is you're never just looking at the skin. And I'm gonna tell you guys a really, really interesting story in the next few minutes about a young girl who just came through my practice that had rashes all over her body, and after one session most of her rashes were gone, which I will get to, but I'll just like keep you guys dangling.
**Unknown:** So first and foremost, I know that when we get on this merry-go-round of not knowing what's going on, seeing a lot of doctors, our blood work coming back normal, we just feel beaten down. We give up. We're exhausted. We're just like, "Screw it.
**Unknown:** Maybe it is in my head. Maybe I am anxious. Maybe I am depressed, and maybe that's what's causing this." But there is a lot of information out there. There's a lot of mixed information out there.
**Unknown:** So if you have tried to take charge of your health, if you have tried a bunch of lotions and steroids and you've tried biologics and you've tried all these things and nothing has worked, it is not your fault. It is not your fault that you didn't know what better testing looks like. It's not your fault that you tried diets that didn't work. It's not your fault that you tried supplements that didn't work because it's impossible for you to know what your body needs until you get better testing.
**Unknown:** It is impossible for you to understand this. And there's also aspects that are ... that testing doesn't reveal, and part of that is what is the emotional manifestation of autoimmune skin conditions. Yes, we're going there, people.
**Unknown:** We're getting into it. So I've already kind of mentioned this, but when you get in-Into the things that we're gonna talk about tonight. And the reason why this is new information, and the reason why you haven't heard this before, is because our system is separating out all of your body systems. You're going to a dermatologist for your skin conditions.
**Unknown:** You might be going to an immunologist because you have an autoimmune condition. You're going to a gastroenterologist for your gut issues. You're going to a psychiatrist because you feel depressed. And nobody's talking to each other.
**Unknown:** Nobody's piecing the puzzle together, and nobody is even considering the fact that they're all connected. And this is, this is literally ignoring basic physiology. We are ignoring the fact that 90 to 95% of your feel-good hormone, serotonin, is made in your gut. So your low level IBS, or irritable bowel syndrome, has nothing to do with your depression.
**Unknown:** But you just stay on the antidepressant because if you get off of it, then, you know, you're just gonna slip into that depression and, and it's gonna be bad. But what about taking into consideration what is physiologically happening in the body so that we're not treating a symptom, and we're actually treating the cause? So the other biggest problem here is that we rely on one avenue of testing in conventional medicine. It's always about chemistry, chemistry, chemistry, chemistry.
**Unknown:** Chemistry is your blood work. So if you have broken chemistry, you have a deficiency, you have high cholesterol, then what are we gonna do? We're gonna fix the chemical pathway. How are we fixing the chemical pathway, guys?
**Unknown:** We're fixing it with chemistry, pharmacology. We're fixing it with drugs. So when you really think about it, the entire framework of the system is based off of testing that shows flaws in your chemistry to dictate how can we manipulate your chemistry through chemistry altering drugs. So that's why when I sit here and talk to you about emotional ties, bioenergetic ties, and toxicity ties, and I talk to you about this, that's why you haven't heard this before, is because the foundation of everything that we've been taught, including myself, has always been about chemistry, broken chemistry, and how do we get people on more meds.
**Unknown:** So when we are talking about the skin, we need to start thinking about the bigger picture here. We need to start thinking about the anatomy. So number one is it's not always about your skin. Your skin is a reflection of your internal environment.
**Unknown:** So one of the things that is most superficial, closest to your skin, right underneath your skin, is going to be something called your lymphatic system, your lymph nodes. So let's break this out, down. Like, let's make it super simple. When you get sick and all this hurts, that's not because your tonsils are swollen.
**Unknown:** That's because your lymph nodes are swollen. Your lymph nodes are swelling to deal with the infection that you are, your body is struggling with in that moment. So you have lymph nodes everywhere. They're literally top of your head all the way down to your toes.
**Unknown:** So when people come into me and they're showing me their patterns of their skin conditions or their autoimmune skin conditions, sometimes people are like, "It's all on my chest." Think about what's in your chest, guys. Lungs, respiratory. "Oh, it's all over my abdomen," or that's where the bulk of it is. Okay, what's in your abdomen?
**Unknown:** Your gut. "Oh, it's all over my back." Okay. "Oh, uh, where is it? It's all over, it's close to my spine." What's that?
**Unknown:** Your spinal cord, your neurological system. So we need to start thinking about, like, where are all of the issues and what could be connected to it. "Oh, I have the worst vitiligo on my face." Okay. What's there?
**Unknown:** Your sinuses. Do you have a bunch of crap in your sinuses? Do you have crap in your, in your gums and your teeth? Have you had root canals?
**Unknown:** Have you had fillings? Have you had all those things? All of those things are relevant, but nobody's asking you that 'cause you're going to a dentist for that. So, oh, you have to go to an ENT if you wanna talk about your sinuses.
**Unknown:** It, it's, you gotta go to a pulmonologist if you wanna talk about your lungs. So this is the point of why integrative medicine is changing the way medicine is being done because we're actually looking at the bigger picture here. So the other thing too is that we also are not considering what is on your skin. Why is the immune system coming to the area in order to create some type of an immune attack?
**Unknown:** Is it because you have a bunch of bad bacteria on your skin? Is it because you've lived in a water damaged building or a water damaged basement, and you have fungus that is on your skin and in your lymph nodes, and now you're having an overreactive immune system that is now creating damage to your skin? Is it because you have parasites on your skin? You might be thinking, like, that is absolutely horrifying.
**Unknown:** Guys, if you have pets in your house, you have parasites in your body, on your body. Like, that's real life. That is the way that it is. So you could easily have dysbiosis on your body, AKA too much of the bad stuff, and your immune system is merely doing its job.
**Unknown:** It's literally coming to the scene, trying to clean things up. But because the in- the situation is so bad, it's now creating damage to that specific tissue. So this is extremely important for you guys to understand, is that autoimmune conditions are not always a bad thing. A lot of times it's actually your immune system doing its job, but nobody's looking beyond.
**Unknown:** Nobody is looking at the bigger picture here. So nobody is really understanding why the heck is that happening. Literally, I had this conversation the other day with a patient who has lesions on his brain, and when we did our testing, the lesions, which are amyloid plaques, guys, AKA multiple sclerosis, they're not. It was iron deposits that was affecting his brain.
**Unknown:** Iron is the immune system's, uh, defense mechanism to try to encapsulate infections in the brain. So his immune system is doing its job, but he's being diagnosed with MS. And yes, he has symptoms, but we can't just suppress the symptoms or give him an immune suppressant. We actually need to figure out what the heck infection is in your brain and how are we gonna deal with this so we can stop this progression.
**Unknown:** So we shouldn't be living in fear of these conditions because these conditions are very fixable. But you need to understand what the heck is actually causing it in the first place, and that takes better testing and asking better questions. The other thing too is emotions. They can play a role in your skin.
**Unknown:** You ever hear that phrase, not feeling comfortable in your own skin? That's a real thing. They have actually done studies on ties to emotional, different types of thought patterns that were associated with skin conditions, and a lot of it was negative self-talk, even self-hate, as well as literally not feeling comfortable in your own skin. And I'm gonna actually get into a story about that as well.
**Unknown:** SoWhen we talk about things that are on the skin that are not supposed to be there. So what I just said before is that you could have things on the skin that are causing this, what we call dysbiosis. We have an overload of bad stuff, either fungus, parasites, bacteria that are on the skin, so your immune system's coming to the scene to try to deal with it. So in the previous modules when we were talking about skin, one of the biggest things that I said is that one of the reasons why you get, uh, or have more susceptibility to the bad stuff on your skin is because we're constantly depleting the good flora on our skin.
**Unknown:** We're constantly depleting the good bacteria. You are covered in bacteria, by the way. If you're like, "Oh my gosh, like I hate bacteria, sanitize, sanitize," like you are doing so much harm to yourself and so much harm to your children. Like being a germaphobe is like you're literally doing more harm than good.
**Unknown:** So every time you pull out that hand sanitizer, that hand sanitizer not only is depleting all your good bacteria, but in addition to that, it's exposing you to a chemical called triclosan. Triclosan is a hormone disruptor. So if you have vitiligo plus hormonal acne, now you understand one of the contributing factors to that. So we're being exposed to chemicals all the time.
**Unknown:** Formaldehyde is in most of our creams, most of our cosmetics. Methylene chloride is something that is in most of our cosmetics. Phthalates, like, guys, turn around your, your shampoo bottle. Start looking at your makeups.
**Unknown:** Look at the lotions. Everything has this stuff in it. Fragrance, glycols, sodium benzo- benzoate, parabens, manganese peroxide. These are all toxic.
**Unknown:** There is an app called Think Dirty that you can actually start taking inventory on the products that you use to see how toxic they are. So as soon as you plug in your Suave shampoo, it actually gives you a rating system to tell you how toxic is this, and you will be baffled on the majority of the things that you're using are toxic. You're putting these toxins on your skin. Your immune system is coming to the scene to try to deal with the toxicity, and that is resulting in rashes, hives, autoimmune skin conditions, psoriasis, vitiligo, the list goes on.
**Unknown:** So with this, this was literally just a lawsuit that happened with Old Spice. So we're talking about personal products and things that we're using every single day that are potentially exposing us to chemicals. So Old Spice was just sued for five million dollars after there were people, uh, sending in photos of burns in their armpits due to the use of their product. So literally, this is something that, you know, you're not always seeing these things in the news, but this has happened with so many different types of personal products, and most of these products are owned by pharmaceutical companies.
**Unknown:** Um, I know that there was some talk about even one of the more natural brands called Native that I personally used to use for a while, but Native was sold to Procter & Gamble, and when they were sold, they actually, uh, changed the en-- uh, the complete formulation, so people that were using it all of a sudden started to have more problems with it. So you literally have to understand that most of your products are actually being or a lot of these good natural products are eventually being sold to larger companies which are changing the ingredients. So you constantly have to be aware of what you're using because the ingredients can change overnight. And outside of just your personal products, when we talk about toxicity, you're getting exposed, um, from your food.
**Unknown:** You're getting exposed from your lawn. You're getting exposed when you spray for mosquitoes. You're getting exposed by the, the pesticides and the herbicides that are on your food, but also that they're potentially spraying in your yard. Tap water, bottled water, baby products.
**Unknown:** Your furniture gives off formaldehyde. Building materials. You get into an old home that you have your lead paint issue and asbestos issues. You get into new buildings, now you have spray insulation that off-gases for twenty years.
**Unknown:** You have dental fillings that are being put in your teeth that are filled with aluminum, mercury, cadmium, silver, nickel, the list goes on. And then we also have cosmetic surgeries. We're shoving Botox into our faces. Botox is literally botulinum that creates paralysis.
**Unknown:** AKA that's why your face is paralyzed. That's why you have no wrinkles. It's not because it's actually like doing anything to your skin. So if you all of a sudden now have an autoimmune skin condition after you've gotten a couple of rounds of Botox, what your immune system is doing is it's doing its job.
**Unknown:** It's attacking the organism that you just injected into your muscle, and it's literally trying to fight it off because it's a foreign invader that is threatening to your immune system. So we need to start even thinking about the cosmetic surgeries that we're doing that potentially are creating these autoimmune reactions. So even in addition, if I haven't overwhelmed you guys already, is cigarette smoke, exhaust, gasoline, pesticides, herbicides, fragrances, like literally the list goes on. Even sunscreens contain tons and tons of different chemicals that you're putting in your skin, on your skin that are literally your immune system is having a reaction to.
**Unknown:** I've had many lifeguards that I've worked with that have actually had zinc oxide toxicity. So I had a patient who came in a little while ago, and he had progressive vitiligo after a three-year bout with debilitating depression. So as I'm having a conversation with this patient, um, you know, he really was like, "I've been dealt a lot of bad cards. I had, you know, some really traumatic situations, and like I lost my job and everybody turned on me, and I really slipped into this really terrible depression, and it was really hard and I feel like I'm finally coming out of it, and you know, things are, are, are definitely on the up and up, and I really wanna get my, my health together." And I was like, "Okay, great." So you know, we set him up with all of his different testing and everything.
**Unknown:** And then he canceled on us a few times. We have a cancellation policy, you know, just really honoring our own time, and he didn't like our cancellation policy. So he called us and threatened us and said, "I'm gonna destroy you online, and I'm gonna literally make sure that nobody ever comes to your business again." And like that's like the fascinating part about this world right now is that, you know, it's just like businesses, you're under attack because you are literally just fo-Protocols or you're, you know, saying, "Hey, you know, you did this and you have to pay for the service." If people don't get what they want, this is what they do now, they threaten. So the point of my story is more so that I'm like this bleeding heart for this guy of all the things that he went through and like, you know, now he's like ready to take charge of his health and like really help him with his vitiligo.
**Unknown:** But really when this situation happened, I realized like we're not the only people that he treated like that. There were definitely like you don't act like that towards one person. You are clearly acting like that in a lot of avenues of your life. And when you are constantly putting bad out, I doubt you're getting much good back because of just your behaviors and really how the universe works.
**Unknown:** So it was just so interesting to me in that moment of being like "Wow, this vitiligo for this person has so much more to do with, you know, how he feels about himself and how he's projecting that onto other people." And this guy other had other physiological things going on, but it's just a very fascinating thing that I wanted to share here because nobody's thinking about that. Nobody's thinking about is my autoimmune condition, and is my body turning on itself because I've turned on myself, because I don't like who I am, and I don't like who I've become, and I don't like how I'm, I'm showing up in the world. And it's one piece of the puzzle, but it is something that definitely cannot be ignored. So when it comes back to more of these physiological layers here, we obviously still have to consider all of these other pieces of to the puzzle.
**Unknown:** And definitely toxicity, like we've talked about, is a big player in this. But what's really fascinating about the whole toxicity piece is that we're talking about its effect on the skin, but then we have the systemic effect that starts to happen. So for those of you that have been here the whole time, one of the things that I mentioned is the system, the internal system that is going to work hand in hand with your skin is your lymphatic system, your lymph nodes. So if you start to put the toxins on the skin, it gets absorbed into the body, it gets absorbed into the lymphatic system, and then it has to get processed by the liver, processed by the kidneys.
**Unknown:** And now what you're doing is not only are you putting stress on your skin, but now you've actually put stress on your immune system and every other detox pathway of your s- of your body. So now your detox pathways are getting more and more stressed and having less and less of an ability to do their job. So if you can't filter the bad stuff out, you are going to have more and more issues with how your immune system is reacting, which is going to lead to so many more issues. So it might start with, you know, a little bit of fatigue, and it might start with an occasional rash, and then it progresses into the autoimmune skin condition, and then it progresses into, "I'm losing my memory," and then it progresses into, "I can't get out of bed.
**Unknown:** I'm so tired." And it's the snowball that so many people have dealt with, and they're just going and getting that blood work done, and they're like, "Everything looks good. Everything looks good. So I don't, you know, I don't know. Maybe you're depressed.
**Unknown:** Maybe you should be on an antidepressant because your blood looks good, so it has to be in your head." And it's just sad. It's sad that that is the reality of what people are being told because these people, it's you're not depressed. It's not in your head. It literally there are so many things being missed in your conventional tests.
**Unknown:** So some of the most common toxicities that I am seeing in relation to the skin, uh, in my office specifically is the zinc oxide, like I said, comes from sunscreen, manganese peroxide coming from cosmetics, anthraquinone. For those of you that are using blemish-reducing creams or skin toning creams, that has an ingredient that is extremely toxic in it called anthraquinone. I highly recommend checking your products for it. There's an insecticide called, uh, dichlorvos, which is on a lot of corn.
**Unknown:** That is something, uh, very specific I see affecting the skin. Uh, we also have to think about dry cleaning, guys. Like, if you're getting most of your clothes dry cleaned, there are so many chemicals in dry cleaning agents. That is going directly onto your skin and getting directly absorbed into your bloodstream.
**Unknown:** Chloroform. This is really fascinating. So chloroform is something I see very often as a skin issue. Chloroform, you might be thinking like, "Isn't that from the movies when they put the rag over the person's face, and they pass out?" So yes, you are correct.
**Unknown:** But when they take chlorine and ammonia to, uh, clean our drinking water, when you go into the shower and you take a hot shower, the chlorine and ammonia with the heat, they transform into low-dose chloroform, and you inhale that in through vapor, and this is one of the components that can really trigger your skin. There's also a lot of issues with, um, methyl methacrylate as well as acrylic esters. Nails, guys. Prop-, uh, propyl glycol, propylene glycol, um, this is in hand sanitizers.
**Unknown:** It's in a lot of makeups. And then formaldehyde, it's gonna be your like keratin treatments, a lot of hair dye, but it's honestly in a lot of... It's in your furniture as well. So I have a question about toxicity testing.
**Unknown:** How many do you test for? Does it depend on the patient? E-everything is always obviously dependent on the patient. But with toxicity testing, we are always screening for toxicity, and we don't just screen for heavy metals 'cause that's only one part of the puzzle.
**Unknown:** We are always screening for all, all of those chemicals that I just shared with you. I shared those because those are the most common that I see through our testing that we do. So we do DNA-based testing. When we do the DNA-based testing, we actually have the ability to know what's stressing the DNA, and chemicals are something that is screened in, uh, using that technology.
**Unknown:** So we're always looking for toxicity, and it's not just mercury, aluminum. It's literally chemicals that, you know, you're po- potentially being exposed to that you're completely unaware of. So speaking of that too is that when we're dealing with like childhood illness or even dental work, we are not even thinking that that potentially could be a trigger for an autoimmune skin condition. But for, again, for those of you that have been listening the whole time, one of the things that I said earlier is that when you think about where you have the most issues in your skin, soSometimes that is actually tied to where you're internally having the most problems.
**Unknown:** So if you have a lot of issues on your abdomen, skin issues on your abdomen, then that's probably because of things that are in the gut. If you have a lot on your chest, that could be because of things that are happening in the lungs, and that really goes for the back as well because your lungs go front and back. And then when you get into the arms and legs, sometimes things follow patterns, and I'm gonna be talking about what that is when you have things bilaterally on both sides that are following like the same pattern. But when we talk about like if you had a lot of sinus infections, maybe you had a lot of ear infections as a kid, maybe you had your tonsils taken out because you had so much strep or you had your adenoids out as well, or you even had your wisdom teeth pulled and then they ended up infected, or you had teeth pulled because of infections, or you even get a ton of canker sores or cold sores, then you have to think about all of that being in the head and neck.
**Unknown:** Maybe most of your issues are on your head and neck. So we really have to start considering anatomy and where the most skin issues are and are they actually following a pattern, because this could be reflective of what's happening inside of you. And also just a side note is when you have a lot of things going on in your sinuses and your tonsils and you just have a lot of neck pain and you have swollen glands in your neck and all of those things, like this is showing you that you're having a major, major issue with lymphatic drainage. So this is not only gonna mess up your immune system, but this is going to create a lot of issues for you neurologically.
**Unknown:** And I see this in my younger population of kids that I work with. Like these, these parents are bringing their kids in for, you know, skin issues or they're bringing them in for gut issues or they're bringing them in for depression. And then we're taking a deeper look and these kids' neurological systems are so freaking stressed, and part of the stress is that their brain is not detoxing at all. And it's not detoxing because they're so stuffy, and it's because they had tons of ear infections, and then they had, you know, tons of tonsil problems, and they have, you know, all of these issues going on in the head and neck area, and it's literally causing so much stress to the neurological system.
**Unknown:** So as parents, you need to not just take this lightly, "Oh, tons of sore throats, just get your tonsils out, it'll solve all the problems," because there might be a bigger problem brewing when it comes to the integrity of the neurological system. And then your kid is struggling in school, and your kid is like, you know, has now ADD, ADHD and, you know, it becomes this spiral and you're trying to treat a neurological or developmental issue when really at the end of the day it has to do with lack of drainage and a really crappy filtration system. So another big thing that I didn't even go into in the previous modules has a lot to do with what can actually screw up your collagen and your connective tissue. So when we actually get into the nitty-gritty of what makes up your skin, I think a lot of us hear of collagen, we hear about people taking...
**Unknown:** doing bone broth for collagen or taking collagen powders or taking different amino acids. We also hear about people getting collagen injections to improve their skin and, and plump up their whatever. I know nothing about plastic surgery, so I'm so clueless with it. But, um, when we talk about what actually makes up the skin, you know, we're talking about connective tissue and collagen.
**Unknown:** So when we actually start to get into the nitty-gritty of certain things that can actually damage both of those compounds, connective tissue and collagen, is the fluoroquinolone family of antibiotics. So this is your Cipro, your Levaquin, your Noroxin, Flosam. These are the most common. Cipro and Levaquin I definitely feel like are the most commonly used, and they're usually used when you're, you have a very persistent or a very severe infection.
**Unknown:** But these fluoroquinolones, it's not that they affect every single person in a really negative way, but I have definitely had some specific cases of people that have had these drugs that, especially people that had Lyme that didn't know it, that had Lyme disease, which is damaging to your connective tissue, and then they were put on, uh, either Levaquin or Cipro for some type of infection that they had. Those are the people that I saw either end up with ruptured tendons, a ruptured Achilles heel, a torn bicep, or they ended up with an autoimmune skin condition. So if you have had various doses of these types of antibiotics, this is definitely a precursor that can play a significant role in the onset of the autoimmune condition. Yeah, Cipro is pretty hardcore stuff, and it's definitely used more often than it should be, but, um, it's definitely just being aware o-of those specifically.
**Unknown:** So there's definitely some very, very specific research that has been done. But the more serious thing even about these fluoroquinolone family is that when we talk about the, the outside of our skin, the other thing that's comprised of connective tissue is our cardiovascular system. So some of the biggest risks is aneurysm, retinal detachment, like bleeding out because of a rupture of an internal vessel. So like this is definitely really scary stuff, and I see a lot of people that have come in with a history of these antibiotics and I start doing my, my testing and I find that their cardiovascular systems are really, really compromised, and they don't know.
**Unknown:** Because what do they always say? What's the first sign of a heart attack? A heart attack. So most people have no idea that that system is compromised.
**Unknown:** But I will tell you, if you are having headaches, if you're having migraines, if you're having, uh, cold hands and feet, if you have varicose veins, if you have spider veins, if you have heart palpitations, uh, skipping of a beat. If you have any of those things, that's a sign that there is something going on with your cardiovascular system. So you definitely need to understand that, like don't just wait to, to deal with it. It's, it's figure out what's going on with it because it might be s-something super simple, but that system, once it becomes compromised, like what I'm doing with my patients in their sixties and seventies, like it's, it's a lot harder to fix those systems.
**Unknown:** It's not harder, it, it takes a lot longer, let's put it that way. So I've talked about the lymph a few times now.And some of you might still be like, "I don't know what the heck she's talking about. I don't even know what the lymphatic system is." So again, guys, this is a system that is a huge component to your immune system, but it's also one of the biggest filtration systems that helps you get rid of the bad stuff. So again, you have lymph nodes from the top of your head to your toes.
**Unknown:** So some of the signs that you need to look out for that you might have a messed up lymphatic system. So some of the signs that your lymphatic system is not working is that you don't sweat. You're the person that goes to the gym, you glisten, you don't sweat. You get swollen glands.
**Unknown:** The other thing about this is that you might be, you might, you might be like, "I don't have swollen glands," like, "I don't even know what you're talking about," but your neck hurts all the time. You go to a chiropractor, you go to PT, you got a fancy pillow, you did all the things, you get massages, and it doesn't get better. That's because it's probably lymph and it has nothing to do with physical. Dry brushing is great by the way, but depending on the severity of the lymphatic system, that might not cut it, but it is definitely a step in the right direction.
**Unknown:** So you can get these swollen glands, you can have neck pain, you can have water retention. And I always ask people like, "I don't have water retention." I'm like, "Do you have water retention on a plane?" And they're like, "Yes." And I'm like, "So you have water retention." The other one, this is very common in men, is skinny arms and legs, big belly. We call it the beer belly. It's not a beer belly, it's a lymph belly.
**Unknown:** So when you get that big belly, especially when it's hard and round, so this is also applicable fo- for females. Females that look like they have a pregnant belly, but they're not pregnant, that is when the lymph, the major lymph vessel, that it gets overloaded and it starts to distend, and it creates that hard belly. So it's not beer, it's a bad lymphatic system. Females tend to get dense breasts or told they have fibrocystic breasts.
**Unknown:** You can have brain fog. The biggest culprit for chronic fatigue is a, is a slow-moving compromised lymphatic system. You can also have lack of tone. There's a lot of women, um, I also do chiropractic, so I have my hands on people a lot.
**Unknown:** There are people that I work with that they have been working out, they're super diligent, weight lift, cardio, they do a lot of all that. And when I touch their bodies, I feel the lack of muscle tone. And that is not because they're not working out hard enough or they're not doing the right exercise, it's because they have inflammation, they have a compromised lymphatic system, and they might actually have a compromised connective tissue. And that connective tissue could be tied to those antibiotics.
**Unknown:** It can also be tied to deficiencies. And a big, big sign of your lymphatic system being compromised is you can't lose weight. No matter what you do, you cannot lose weight. You starve yourself.
**Unknown:** You eat 500 calories a day, you still don't lose weight. It's because it's not fat tissue, it's inflammation and toxins that are trapped. I also forgot to say, that's what cellulite is, guys. Cellulite is toxins trapped in your fascia and your lymphatic system.
**Unknown:** So if you have cellulite, stop beating yourself up and thinking that you need to like, you know, go like do more squats. You need to detox is what you need to do. So, so I've mentioned this already is if you are dealing with skin issues, are your skin issues on your abdomen? Are your skin issues on your face?
**Unknown:** Are they on your back? Are they on your neck? Are they on your legs? Are they, you know, where are they?
**Unknown:** Because depending on where they are, this could be tied to lung infections, it could be tied to strep in your sinuses, it could be tied to gut infections. But listen, I want you to understand that when we talk about infections, everybody thinks like flu, my throat hurts, I'm in bed, I have a fever, I can't function. That's not how an infection looks most of the time. Infections can cause moderate symptoms that most of you are dealing with.
**Unknown:** It can give you headaches. It can make you have altered temperature. It can make you tired. It can make you sluggish.
**Unknown:** It can make you foggy. It can make your stomach hurt occasionally. It can do all of those things. Most of you are walking around with low-grade infections.
**Unknown:** And one of the things that you wanna keep your eye out for is that are you getting hot when you sleep? And I rephrase this question three different ways or ten different ways when I have a patient in my office. I'm like, "Oh, do you get hot when you sleep?" "No. Um, no, it's just hot flashes." Yeah, maybe sometimes, but there's also a consideration your body's fighting an infection.
**Unknown:** But I'm also like, "Do you like the fan on? Do you like the air conditioning low? Do you like the window open? Do you kick the covers off?" And they're like, "Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, I only sleep with a sheet." You're sleeping with a sheet 'cause you're hot, and that's because your body is going into repair mode when you sleep, and it's trying to fight off infections.
**Unknown:** So this is very, very common. I know that even my husband, when we first started dating, I was like, like, "Literally don't even touch me when you sleep," because he was like a heater. And then when we finally did his testing, we realized he was a big old mess too. So we've been there.
**Unknown:** I get it. It's just being able to understand that, you know, you don't know what you don't know until you actually leverage better testing. All right. I'm gonna show you this because this is a really cool thing.
**Unknown:** So when I had, um, one of my more recent patients, she came in to see me, and she was dealing with really severe skin rashes. And her skin rashes were... They were, they were in a couple of different areas. But the one thing that she showed me was that on the outside of her legs, she had a rash on both sides.
**Unknown:** And then she also had a rash going on the inside of her forearm to her thumb. So, and they were on both sides. And I said to her, and I go, "That's a meridian." And her mom's like, "What?" 'Cause her mom's been... They've been everywhere.
**Unknown:** She's 15. She's, like, embarrassed of her skin. She doesn't wanna be in a bikini. She doesn't wanna go out.
**Unknown:** Like, it, it's terrible. Like, she's literally young. Nobody knew what was wrong with her. She's been to, like, the best dermatologist, New York City, this, that, the other thing.
**Unknown:** And meridians, it's Chinese medicine. It, it's, like, it's not conventional medicine. It's, you know, it, it's just a completely different wheelhouse. I know about it because I need to because there's just things that I hit plateaus with in the past, and that's what led me to learn this.
**Unknown:** So freaking cool thing is that she had this rash. So I was like, "All right. We're gonna do some more testing." So we did her testing. We do something called autonomic response testing.
**Unknown:** When we do the autonomic response testing, we literally test, like, anything and anything you could ever imagine, but we test for supplements, we test for diet, we test for food reactions, we test for toxicity. We also test for stress meridians. So when we did that, we test for stress meridians, and the meridian that came up was lung and large intestine meridian. That is what this meridian is.
**Unknown:** It's the lung and large intestine meridian. So even cooler is we have a technology in our office called the BioScan that you can scan specific items against a meridian to figure out what is stressing the meridian. So when we started to test, there were toxins, parasites, there were emotional components, which is creepy because it lists out the limiting beliefs, 'cause it's all different stuff. There's emotions, limiting beliefs, there's all this stuff.
**Unknown:** And we scanned it. It showed what was out of range, and then I gave it to her and her mom, and they were, like, they were so great about it. They were, like, dying laughing. They're like, "Oh my God, this is her.
**Unknown:** Like, this is her biography. Like, this is crazy." ButI think the best part about it is that when we do the scan through the bio scan and we evaluate these meridians, it's not just a diagnostic, it's also a treatment modality. So we used cold laser to neutralize the, the effects of the things that came up. So I said to her, I go, "No promises, but there's a high probability that your skin might clear up by the time I see you next." So I saw them a week later to just review everything, and the s- the rash went away.
**Unknown:** So freaking cool stuff. But again, like you have to understand is that this is a meridian problem. This girl didn't truly have a skin problem. It was a meridian problem.
**Unknown:** So her lung and large intestine was physiologically stressed, so we were... You know, we did supplements, we did some dietary changes, we did all of that. But in addition, we helped to clear the stress out of the meridians as well. So there's really, really fascinating things that you can leverage when it comes to al- also understanding bioenergetically what's going on in the body.
**Unknown:** So the other thing that you see here is the facial map, and the facial map is, you know, this is like, this is literally my life, guys. I go to a restaurant, I start staring at people. I'm diagnosing them. It's a weird place to be, but it's very interesting because you look at people that have black circles under their eyes, and that's very kidney related.
**Unknown:** This girl also had pimples right here. That's your large intestine meridian. Uh, babies. You ever see babies that come out with a mark right here?
**Unknown:** So there's a lot of babies that have a mark right here. That's their liver, and then when you ask mom or dad, it turns out they were also jaundice, which is liver related. So there's so much to be said about visually looking at the person and also looking at the patterns of their skin issues. So I already told that story, so.
**Unknown:** The other thing too that's really gonna throw you guys for a loop is that blue light. Blue light coming from your phone. This is one of the key factors that is damaging skin. I'm not gonna say that it's gonna sit here and cause an autoimmune skin condition, but when people are like, "Oh, I'm aging.
**Unknown:** Oh, my wrinkles. Oh, my skin, I need Botox," you need to start thinking about how much FaceTime I'm s- in front of blue light. Are you in front of a laptop all day? Are you literally in front of your phone all day?
**Unknown:** Are you laying in your bed with your phone three inches from your face? These are all causing damage to your skin. Like, this has been researched at this point. Literally, you could type in Google "blue light damage to the skin" and it will pop up.
**Unknown:** There's tons of research about it, and nobody's telling us about this. So we need to start considering how are we protecting ourselves from the blue light in our devices. So the biggest thing, if you haven't taken it away so far, is that you don't know what you don't know. No-- You, you're not going to a dermatologist and they're talking to you about meridians.
**Unknown:** It's not happening. Nobody's talking to you about your emotions. Nobody's talking to you about toxins on your skin. They're not talking to you about your personal products.
**Unknown:** They're not talking to you about the location of your skin issues and how that might be tied to an organ. Nobody's talking to you about those things. They're pretty much saying it's a skin issue, and we're gonna steroid the crap out of it with lotions and injections, and eventually we'll go to a biologic, AKA shut down your immune system, and we're just gonna hope for the best. And then when you have things like vitiligo, psoriasis, they're like, "Well, there's really no cure.
**Unknown:** We're just gonna try to use these meds to just, you know, make it a little bit better and make you a little bit more comfor- comfortable and, you know, we'll just kinda see what happens." So you guys are the guinea pig. You're the guinea pig, and all the trial and error is happening to us. So if you think it's happening just to the animals that they're doing testing on, no, really at the end of the day, because every single one of you are so unique and so different and so biologically unique, really at the end of the day, it's a crapshoot. We're not using any level of specificity in medicine.
**Unknown:** We're literally winging it. Well, we're not winging it, but most of medicine is winging it. So I think that the biggest thing is, is we need to stop just thinking, "Oh, this is bad genes. This is bad luck.
**Unknown:** Oh, I'm getting old. I'm aging." Whatever the things are that we've been programmed to think is normal, there's always a reason for your skin issue, and especially when we're talking about autoimmune issues, like how many people have autoimmune conditions now? Literally, you go into a room, go to a, you know, your colleagues are coming up, go to a holiday party. Everybody's talking about their health.
**Unknown:** They feel crap. They got this. Their two-year-old just started having seizures. Like it's, it's wild.
**Unknown:** Like we need to step back, and somebody just said, "I wish I could afford functional medicine." I feel like you can't not afford it at this point, and I'm not saying that to be rude in any capacity, but I just feel like we are living in a world that is making us very sick, and we need to do the best that we can to try to get access to things that are more preventative because this is... It, it's getting bad. Like, I'm seeing crazy stuff come through my doors, and I am, I'm experiencing it in my personal life. All my friends are having kids.
**Unknown:** Their kids have all these problems. It's just we have to figure out a way, and I'm just so scared for our younger generations and, like what is happening. It's just these kids, like autism, PANDAS, like all these neurological conditions. Like there's now special accommodations in classes.
**Unknown:** There are special schools for it. There is more teachers having to go into special education because of all of this. It's really, really just shitty. It's really to be honest.
**Unknown:** I totally get it. When the time is right, my darling, we will be here waiting for you. So when it comes to really understanding the body and looking at the bigger picture is that you have to understand that it's not just about that. When you already have an autoimmune condition, there's probably other layers.
**Unknown:** You might need to fix your lymphatic system. You might need to detox. You might need emotional work. You might need bioenergetic work.
**Unknown:** You might need to fix your meridians. There's a lot of things that have to be considered that will allow you to get over the hump. So we have moved into that model so that we can really be able to hit all of those different angles. So depending on your situation and what your goals are, you know, when it really comes down to just not even knowing like what you need to do, not knowing what you should eat, not knowing what supplements you should take, not knowing what the heck is even going on with your own body.
**Unknown:** Like when you get this information, and you're able to nail this down and be in that driver's seat, like this is priceless. It's really so significant to just get out of this mindset that you wanna just save a buck with, you know, using your co-pays because it just wastes time and money, and you just get frustrated and beaten down by the system. But I really can't tell you how much I love doing this. Uh, it is truly my passion to educate people and to really, uh, push medicine forward, uh, starting with the patient.
**Unknown:** So, uh, I really hope you enjoyed this and took a ton of value away. All right, guys. We thank you for being a listener and subscriber to Integrative Wellness Radio. If you're looking to learn more about Integrative Wellness Group as well as Dr.
**Unknown:** Nick or Dr. Nicole, you can check out integrativewellnessgroup.com. All night, no sleep. 'Cause I feel like I'm always dreaming.
**Unknown:** Wide awake, that's okay
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About Integrative You Radio
Integrative You Radio is a root cause medicine and integrative medicine podcast hosted by Dr. Nicole Rivera and Dr. Nick Carruthers — two integrative doctors who build personalized wellness protocols from your DNA, minerals, hormones, gut, and nervous system rather than from a population template. Looking for an integrative doctor who reads your labs together instead of in isolation? This is the show.
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