How restoring your skin pH can help calm eczema & TSW – Part 1 & 2 (S4E31 & 32)

Have you ever thought about how your skin pH could be affecting your skin flares?

I’ve shared in the past how it’s so important for the skin barrier to have a lower (and more acidic) skin pH, especially because it can take up to 6 hours for your skin to normalize after a shower!

👉 To summarize, higher (and more alkaline skin pH) is linked to a higher severity in atopic dermatitis and other issues, including:

✅ Increased inflammation
✅ Increased staph aureus bacteria
✅ Decrease in ceramide production
✅ An increasingly compromised skin barrier

👉 On the other hand, a lower skin pH is more acidic and is linked to a lower severity of atopic dermatitis. It’s also linked to these benefits:

✅ Healthier bacterial flora
✅ Protects skin barrier
✅ Decrease in staph aureus bacteria
✅ Increase in antimicrobial defense

Has anything helped your skin pH levels?

In this episode, you’ll discover:

• How you can repair a barrier that’s been damaged by eczema, TSW & steroids
• How are staphylococcus aureus and skin pH levels related?
• How your nose is tied to staphylococcus aureus
• Why do we need to treat the nose & mouth when it comes to eczema & TSW?
• Why is staphylococcus aureus found in the gut too?
• How can no moisture treatment (NMT) help eczema & topical steroid withdrawal (TSW)?

I hope this episode encourages you today!

 

 

WATCH OR LISTEN TO THE PODCAST BELOW:

 

 

You can also listen or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or other podcast players.

Dr. Greenberg is a licensed Naturopathic Doctor (ND) who founded the Center for Integrative Dermatology. She is passionate about natural skin care and believes that many of today’s chronic skin diseases can be healed by using evidence-based alternative treatments.

Dr. Greenberg attended Bastyr’s naturopathic medical school. While there she received advanced clinical training with leading experts in dermatology at the University of Washington Medical School and Seattle Children’s Hospital.

Sources:

PMID: 18489300
PMID: 23322028
PMID: 21036388

TRANSCRIPT (Part 1)

Abby:

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the eczema podcast today. I have a really great guest for you. She is so knowledgeable and I am very excited that I’ve had the opportunity to meet her. Her name is Dr. Julie Greenberg and she is a licensed naturopathic doctor and she founded the Center for Integrative Dermatology. She’s really passionate about natural skincare and she also received her MBA from Stanford and she’s helping a lot of people who are going through eczema and other skin challenges as well. And I love that she’s also training and teaching other naturopathic students on dermatology and integrative dermatology. So welcome to the show, Dr. Julie.

Dr. Julie:

Thanks so much for having me, Abby. You know, I listened to your podcast and I love it. So I think you’re doing such great work.

Abby:

Thank you so much. It’s such an honor to have you on the podcast and to have you share your knowledge. And I know that just before this, we’re talking about a lot of information. And even before this, we’ve talked about how there’s a lot of great information that you have to share. And I also love how you’re so knowledgeable with integrative dermatology, because it’s lacking so much in today’s industry. There’s not a lot of people who really specialize in that and I’m just so thankful that you do specialize in it.

Dr. Julie:

Yeah, it’s true. I wish that there were more of us which is why I’m out there doing a lot of education of doctors even dermatologists students, like you said, medical students, it’s just so important. We have a lot of dermatologists and practitioners who do aesthetic medicine, which is great. You know, people want to look and feel great, but we need more practitioners in the medical dermatology space and in the integrative space, really trying to find the root causes to these chronic inflammatory diseases like eczema that plague our kids and they played adults and the rates are increasing. So I hope we’ll get more people on board with this.

Abby:

Yes, definitely. So can you tell our viewers how you first got started into integrative dermatology and how you switched into it?

Dr. Julie:

Yeah, so it was kind of a personal journey. For myself, I actually was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis or hypo autoimmune hypothyroidism in my twenties, right after business school, after I got my MBA at Stanford and I had never had a health crisis before. And so like many of us, you know, I took my health for granted and I thought healthy eating was like lean cuisine and a diet Coke, because that was what we were told is eat low fat. And when I went to the doctor and get diagnosed, they were just like, oh, you know, we don’t know what causes this and we don’t really know how to fix it. So you’re going to be on medication for the rest of your life. And probably you’re going to just continue to gain weight and be tired. And, you know, there’s not much we can do about it.

Dr. Julie:

And it was just so devastating to me that this is the head of USC Endocrinology Health Center. Like this is a major health organization. The head of endocrinology is saying this to me. And so I started doing research on my own and on food. And then I really got into the products and what are the chemicals that we put on our skin and that research kind of led me to all the endocrine disruptors and valets and parabens and really learning just that. There’s not really any regulation for what we put on our skin and women and kids. We can put like up to 120 chemicals on our skin a day with our personal care products and that affects us all over. And so I just got really passionate about it and skincare and started making my own skincare and doing research. And that really led me into the whole space. And just learning how, you know, when you get an answer from a doctor, that’s like, oh, we don’t know. And there’s nothing we can do. That’s kind of not good enough. Right? We need to keep asking questions and keep trying to find the root cause because otherwise we’re just suppressing symptoms. And then that medication that we’re taking causes another symptom. So then we need to take another medication to suppress that symptom. And it’s polypharmacy and most Americans are on multiple prescriptions for this reason.

Abby:

Wow. And that’s so true. What you said about how Americans are on so many types of medication. And I love that you’re really working to find the root cause. And today I know that one of the topics that we wanted to talk about is the skin pH and how that affects the whole skin system and how that effects eczema as well. So I would love to learn more about what you have to share about how the skin pH affects the whole body and the whole skin system.

Dr. Julie:

Yeah. So I know it sounds really technical and I’ll go through what pH is first for your listeners. But I’m going to also try to put it in a way that I think that just kind of makes sense. So pH is a scale. And I think we kind of inherently know things are acidic, right? Lemon juice is really acidic. Battery acid is actually super acidic. So on the scale we kind of go like 0 to 14, battery acid is 0, lemon juice is 2, things like blood and water are neutral. That’s 7. And then things that are alkaline or like ammonia, or like a drain cleaner they’re up at like 12 and 14. And pH is really important to how the body works and all over our body. We have different pages that have to be correct in order for our body to function properly.

Dr. Julie:

So our stomach, I think we all know we have stomach acid. That’s really acidic, right? We have a pH of about two, whereas our blood is very tightly controlled. It has to be a pH of like around 7.3, 7.4. And if it gets even just slightly off, you basically can’t function well, the skin has its own pH and it’s supposed to be acidic. So skin is optimally functioning at a pH of like 4.5 to 5.5. Now, normally like back in caveman days when we were out and about, you know, we weren’t taking hot showers every day and we weren’t using soaps on our body every day. But as we’ve developed, you know, our, our hygiene, it’s pretty common for people to take hot showers every day and scrubbed themselves down with soap. Right. And sadly, we’ve kind of created this perfect storm where we are constantly disrupting the pH of our skin.

Dr. Julie:

So if we think about like, let’s say you had a pat of cold butter on a glass plate and you wanted to get it off, what would you do? You’d run really hot water and you’d use soap. Right. And that gets the fat off really easily. I mean, if you tried, otherwise you would just be smooshing, you know, the cold pat of butter around the plate, but you put hot water and soap on it and it’s like clean and a few seconds. Well, we do that to our skin. So we have this like really nice lipid layer that we produce fatty acids in our skin. And that is protective. So first we run hot water and soap on it. So we remove the fatty acid layer and then the sub themselves are super alkaline. So they have a high pH of like 12. So we kind of do everything we can to make our skin barrier disrupted, unfortunately, and just think about now in the times of COVID, I think we’re all washing our hands a lot, you know, it’s funny 30 seconds under was so, and how many of us are having cracked dry hand?

Dr. Julie:

Some of us are bleeding on our hands and that’s, again, we’re just stripping the lipid layer off and we’re creating a really alkaline pH and our skin just can’t recover from that on its own, just in the amount of time that it has between washings and even just putting water on your skin, they found in studies, it raises the pH of your skin and it can take up to six hours for your skin to naturally get that pH back down to an acidic level.

Abby:

That’s a long time.

Dr. Julie:

Yeah. So, unfortunately it’s kind of the perfect storm of we’re just constantly like hitting our skin barrier with things that are not helpful for it.

Abby:

So what if people do use water and then they put on a cream after more of a correct pH that’s optimal for their skin. Will that help bring it back into balance?

Dr. Julie:

It can. So creams are usually not at a pH that’s going to be acidic. They just can’t be formulated that way. And it’s interesting. Because when you see a product that says, oh, it’s pH balance, it feels like, oh, okay, that’s great. Like is pH balance for my skin. But what that really means is it’s probably neutral. So that’s probably at a seven and actually skin. We want to be like 4.5 to 5.5. So there’s a lot of things and this is critical, right? We, if we want to even not just eczema, but certainly for eczema, we know that eczema is a problem with inflammation and it’s a problem with skin barrier disruption. So for all of my eczema patients, we, we go through this, we talk about skin pH. I showed them the kind of chart and they can visualize the pH scale.

Dr. Julie:

And then we talk about, okay, so we’re going to wash our hands. We’re going to use soap. Right. We need to clean. So how do we do that in minimal ways? How do we use nice kind of more gentle soaps, right. So I think the more natural soap, when you look at the ingredients, how many ingredients does it have? Is it a list of 20 multi-syllabic chemicals that you can’t pronounce? Or is it like, you know, five or six things where you basically know where that is? So let’s start with using a gentle soap, but then we’re going to reacidify our skin. We’re going to help it out. And so there’s a lot of great natural, wonderful products for your skin. One of my favorites, Aloe Vera Gel is so great for skin. So first of all, it’s acidic, it’s got a pH of around 4.5.

Dr. Julie:

So automatically, we’re helping bring that pH back down on our skin. And Ella Virgil is healing and soothing. It’s not as, and it’s not even just good for damaged skin it’s been found to help even with like wrinkles and skin quality. So I use all of our gel every single day, all over my whole body and face after the shower. And it’s really pretty cost-effective, you know, you can get good, big bottles of it for like eight bucks for 16 ounces, high quality Aloe Vera Gel. And then I want to point out, this is not the green gloopy stuff that you see when you go to your pharmacy that tells itself as like, you know, after sun aloe, Vera gel, real Ella Vera gel is very thin it’s kind of watery and white. So it shouldn’t be green in gloopy. That’s not the good stuff. So Ella Virgil is one of my favorites works great for eczema. You can put it on babies and kids. You can put it on adults. Fantastic. Another thin product I love is hydrosols. And are you familiar with hydrosols? A lot of people don’t know exactly what they are.

Abby:

Yeah. So I’ve tried like rose hydrosols before different hydrosols, but maybe you can explain it because I know a lot of my viewers probably haven’t heard about it before.

Dr. Julie:

Yeah. I think hydrosols are one of the most underused products in skincare, like one of the best things for us and one of the least known. So we probably all heard of essential oils and hydrosols are produced in the production process of essential oils. So let’s say we’re making lavender essential oil. They usually take hundreds of pounds of lavender and they put it in a big copper distiller with water and then they heat it up. And the stuff that evaporates goes into the air and gets cooled down a tube and collects into a separate vessel. And the stuff that’s floating on top is the essential oil. And that’s very, very concentrated plant products. And that, you know, we don’t want to put that directly on our skin. You need to dilute it and really know what you’re doing. If you’re working with essential oils, you can burn the skin.

Dr. Julie:

You can get sensitized, you can get into trouble, but the water that collects over in the other vessel underneath the essential oil is the hydrosol. And so it’s water, that’s been infused with the plant properties, but it’s not like super concentrated in the way that essential oils are, but it is wonderful. And it has it’s gentle. It has the healing properties of the plant in it. It’s also acidic. So it’s pH is about 4.5 to 5.5 smells. Fantastic. You can get it. And, you know, lavender and Rosemary rose, like you said, rose geranium, all sorts of hydrosols. And I don’t use essential oils usually on babies or kids. Because it’s just too much, but hydrosols, I use liberally and they’re wonderful. They’re wonderful. If you have dandruff, they’re wonderful for eczema. They’re wonderful for psoriasis. Yeah, so aloe and hydrosols, I think are two of my main go to’s to help re-acidify the skin. And then like you’re saying you want nice natural, healthy creams. That’s going to put the lipid layer back on. So those, those combination things help rebalance the skin quickly. And if you’ve got COVID hands, try this out and you’ll see, they’ll start to heal. Even when you’re washing them, you just put on like aloe or hydrosol and then a nice good cream afterwards. And your hands should start to heal even with the washing.

Abby:

That’s so great. I love that tip. Thank you so much for it. So I know that there are a lot of brands out there that are probably, they probably contain like a lot of preservatives or like they’re not real, you know, just like a lot of other skincare products out there. So do you have any recommendations for Aloe Vera gel and also for the hydrosols?

Dr. Julie:

Yes. So I do have a specific brand, so I love Mountain Rose. Herbs is a herbal forum based in Oregon, which if your listeners don’t know is, you know, it’s very rural and there’s a lot of natural farming. So mountain rose has very high quality stuff. They have essential oils, Aloe Vera gel, hydrosols, I love their stuff. I will say right now with COVID. You know, the whole world has suddenly discovered the value of herbal medicine, and there’s a run on all these products. So there’s wait times to get it. So you may have to wait a couple of weeks to get your stuff, but I really love them, but I will say, you know, I like to teach my patients, read the labels. So many of us go to the market if we’re, you know, obviously if you’re picking up kale, that’s great.

Dr. Julie:

There’s nothing to read. It’s just a bunch of leaves. But anytime, you know, you pick up a package product of any kind. I think a lot of us kind of inherently like pick it up and turn it over and read the ingredients like, Hey, do I know what this is now? How many of us have read the ingredient label on our products, every single product that you put on yourself or your kids, you should read the label and see if you understand the ingredients. Now, the only caveat is natural products, natural ingredients. They include the Latin name. So that may be unfamiliar to you and that’s okay, but they’ll usually have the common name next to it. So like rosemarynis officio efficienalice is Rosemary. And usually you’ll see both of them, but it’s the same as any food. Like if you don’t understand what those ingredients are, don’t put it on your body or your kid’s body. Yeah.

Abby:

And I just also want to share as well that there are a lot of databases out there that, that people can use as well, like the EWG group and there’s other sites as well. I think there’s one called Paula’s choice. And I know there’s some inky decoders out there that as well, that can help people. So yeah, hopefully that can be of help in case anyone wants to do some research.

Dr. Julie:

Yeah. EWG database is great. You can enter products and ingredients and find out about them. And you’re aligned, you know, I’ve looked at all the ingredients in your product line and you have great ingredients, great natural ingredients that when people read it their going to understand what that is. So I think it’s you know, you find trusted brands and you learn how to read labels and you can do your research at like the EWG. And all of those things together can get you to good healthy products, good products for your skin.

Abby:

So Dr. Julie, so one thing that has really given me some pet peeve is a lot of the mainstream products out there that are marketed to help eczema actually don’t seem to contain really good ingredients. What are your thoughts about that? And also one of the popular products out there is Cerave. What do you think about the ingredients in it?

Dr. Julie:

Yeah, so, you know, a lot of this is just marketing hype, right? And you’ll see words like all natural. You know, there’s, there’s a lot of terms that actually aren’t regulated. It doesn’t mean anything. So you can put anything in it basically and call it all natural. And it’s unfortunate that’s why I think you do need to learn how to read labels and, and learn ingredients survey and all of those, you know, some people find them helpful, but again, when you turn it over and you look at the ingredients, you’ll find a couple of things. A lot of these products can chain petroleum mineral oil is a petroleum-based product and it is literally a by-product from the petroleum industry from making gasoline it’s from oil. And so on the one hand, right? Mineral oil is occlusive. It does put a barrier on your skin.

Dr. Julie:

So they’ll tout it and say like, oh, it’s so good for your skin. But I think we all know inherently putting petroleum and oil by-products is not actually good for our skin.

Abby:

Same as bad.

Dr. Julie:

There’s a lot of, yeah. There’s a lot of good alternatives to it, right? That actually do much better in studies. Like if you look at coconut oil versus mineral oil, coconut oil will outperform stuff like Vaseline and petroleum based oils every time in terms of healing, the skin in terms of fighting staph aureus. So it’s not a necessary ingredient and it’s not helpful or healthy for you or your kids. The other problems I think with lotions is anytime you have a lotion in a base of oil and water. And we all know from fifth grade science class, that when you pour together oil and water, they don’t mix, they float one on top of the other.

Dr. Julie:

And so in order to get a lotion, you have to use an emulsifier, which smashes together the molecules at a molecular level, so that the oil and water doesn’t separate. And then now that you have water in your product, you must have preservative because if you don’t have preservative, you’re going to get bacteria and fungal growth very quickly. It won’t be shelf stable. So when you’re buying a product like Cerave, when you look at the ingredients, most of the first ingredients on the product are going to be water like a petroleum, mineral oil, emulsifiers, and preservatives. I’m also fires and preservatives are not good for your skin. In fact, emulsifiers strip the lipid layer from your skin. So the, the more watery a lotion, the more emulsifier and the more it can actually strip the lipid layer and aggravate your skin. So, yeah, actually I’m not a fan of lotions or those kinds of products, and unfortunately they’re not even really good for us. There’s just many better alternatives out there.

Abby:

Yeah. Thank you for sharing your opinion, because I personally looked at some of the ingredients for some of the mainstream products and there’s a lot of ingredients that really wouldn’t match up to my standards. So yeah. I appreciate you for sharing your opinion as

Dr. Julie:

Well. Yeah. I would agree with that.

 

TRANSCRIPT (Part 2)

Abby:

Julie, how would you begin to repair a lipid layer and a skin barrier that is really severely damaged by steroids or from having eczema?

Dr. Julie:

Yeah, so there’s a couple of different things. If someone has eczema and particularly if they’re having a flare, I pretty much look at that skin an d I automatically think staph aureus. And I think a lot of us think like, oh, but staph aureus – staph, must be a staph infection, but that’s not necessarily true. Really anytime you have eczema and it’s active or you’re having a flare, there’s probably staph, that’s playing a role. And the interesting thing about pH and staph really wants a higher pH a pH of about 7.5.And they’ve done studies and patients who have eczema, their skin pH is more alkaline it’s higher. So we know that this is part of what’s happening is pH is not just a problem for dry cracked skin.

Dr. Julie:

It’s a real problem for people with eczema, because we’re not sure why and how, but their pH goes up. It gets more alkaline. Then staph aureus can overgrow and get a hold. Until you treat the staph and you get rid of the staph, you’re really not going to get rid of the eczema. So, we do want to do several things, including things to reacidfy skin, like the aloe or the hydrosol, apple cider vinegar is another one. We can dilute it in water and spray it on the skin and that’s acidic. It’s vinegar. So that’s great. And then we want to put these healthy, you know, types of cocoa butter and coconut oil and things on there, but you have to treat the staph too. And I do that in different ways. Topically, you can use essential oils, but you need a practitioner who knows what they’re doing to properly blend the concentration.

Dr. Julie:

You can use stuff like colloidal, silver, topically that’s pretty effective against staph coconut oil that we talked about. So all of those things can help. But the tricky bit with staph is it actually colonizes the nose. So if anyone’s ever dealt with eczema or particularly staph, and even when you take antibiotics, right, you clear the staph, it goes away and then the staph is back and it’s like, oh, what happens? Like, why can’t I get rid of this? Why can’t I heal my skin? And it’s hiding out in your nose. So it loves our med caves. It actually likes to hang out in the anterior nares, like in the hair. So you have to treat the nasal colonization because anyone who’s got staph on their skin, they absolutely are colonized in their nose. I like also silver spray for that.

Dr. Julie:

I think it’s quite helpful. There are pharmaceuticals like mupirocin, but it doesn’t do a great job. I was actually just on a dermatology ground run rounds call with one of the universities where they were talking about the fact that the mupirocin isn’t helping with the nasal colonization of staph and what do we do, this is where the herbals nasal stuff can be very helpful. And then I also find staph a lot in the gut of my eczema patients. So you have to treat the gut too. But, the pH and the staph, they do go together. Sometimes just by lowering the pH and using these acidic products, you can balance the skin enough where the staph will eventually go away, because it just can’t thrive. We have we have these great anti-microbial peptides on the skin with wonderful names like defensin and dermcidin, and their job is to protect us against pathogens like staph, but they need to operate at an acidic pH. So if our skin gets too alkaline, they basically get an activated and they can’t function. So that’s yet another reason why we need the pH to be low so that our skin can produce germicide and defensin and help kill off, you know, stuff like staph, which we know is completely correlated with eczema and the severity of eczema.

Abby:

Thank you, Dr. Julie, that is so interesting. I recently actually read a research paper where in terms of the mouth 45% of the bacteria in the oral cavity is also found in the gut. So it’s actually so surprising that the nose would also have ties to the rest of the body. And I’m really glad that you mentioned that pattern because I don’t think a lot of the listeners who are listening right now have probably heard of that connection before. So I appreciate you for mentioning that.

Dr. Julie:

Yeah. And I’m glad you, you brought up the mouth. It’s why we find staph aureus in the gut of eczema patients. It is coming in through the nose, through the mouth, through the skin. And as part of my treatment protocols, I do prescribe certain toothpastes, antibacterial toothpaste because we need to kill it in the nose and we need to kill it on the skin. We need to kill it in the gut, but if it just keeps coming in through the mouth, we’re swallowing it. Right. And so the point is not to kill it and then have more come in. Right. So we need to use it at every point. And there’s really great antibacterial toothpaste that actually improve your gum health and your tooth health at the same time that you’re killing some of these oral bacteria that, you know, like you said, we find that we swallow it and then they go to the gut.

Abby:

I love that you addressed the mouth too, because I think that’s a missing piece that a lot of people aren’t addressing. Do you have any toothpaste or probiotic recommendations for the mouth that you also recommend?

Dr. Julie:

Yeah. So as far as toothpaste, I really like Uncle Harry’s brand. It comes in a jar and it’s got some really great ingredients. Again, read the ingredients. Do I know what this is? So it has things like at night clay, many of us have heard of bentonite clay might use that on your face, or you might take it internally, but it’s just a clay and it’s really good for the teeth. And then there are certain essential oils in the toothpaste that are very good for cleaning up bacteria on your gums and teeth and Uncle Harry is you can just buy like on Amazon or, sometimes at like whole foods, wherever there’s activated charcoal toothpaste, like magic mud that I really like, and they have things like cinnamon and spearmint. And also, you know, these like herbal antibacterials and the activated charcoal absorbs that kills things really great for your gums and teeth as well.

Dr. Julie:

There’s some prescription ones that you’d need to get from a provider, like one called dental cited that I’ll prescribe for my patients sometimes, but that, I don’t think they sell that direct to patients, but yeah. And you’ll find you’ll, you’ll go into your dentist, you know, at your six month checkup and your dentist will be like, wow, what are you doing? You don’t really have any plaque or tartar. So it’s really a win-win because you’re proving your teeth and gum health at the same time that you’re killing this bacteria. And then I really liked, Kerio Bright has a mouthwash. That’s like got tons of nice herbs in it, like clove, clove is wonderful for the gums. And it has lots of other things. So I like to have patients swish with that when they’re done brushing as well.

Abby:

Awesome. I actually just read a really interesting study lately that said that people who do mouth breathing tend to have higher rates of Exuma compared to people who do nose breathing. And I was planning to do a whole episode on this, but I just found it so interesting.

Dr. Julie:

Yeah. It’s not surprising, honestly, it’s we, you know, we are all connected, our whole body’s connected and I think it’s still like the major mistake that dermatologists make is just thinking of the skin. Okay. Let’s put a topical on it. You know, it’s all connected and eczema is an inflammatory and then a disease of inflammation. And that inflammation is coming from a lot of times, our gut and dysbiosis, and it’s definitely coming in our mouth. So that’s interesting. Because our mouth dries out when we mouth breathe and then we can’t really fight the bacteria. So yeah. I’m not surprised, but it’s, it’s interesting information.

Abby:

Yeah. So I have a lot of people that will probably try to DIY what you mentioned about the nose and killing the staph there. So how long should people be using the anti-microbials or either the colloidal silver in their nose for.

Dr. Julie:

So let me, let me start by saying that, you know, I don’t know each of your listeners situation, so this shouldn’t be construed as medical advice. And I do recommend that you find a practitioner, either a naturopathic doctor or somebody who’s knowledgeable in this area and get under their treatment because we can make a lot of mistakes when we try to self-treat. But as a general rule, I like to treat the nose, the nasal colonization for 30 days beyond seeing any sign of eczema on the skin. It’s really stubborn. I have different formulas that I try, depending like there’s, we’ve totally cleared the eczema. There’s no sign of eczema whatsoever. You still treat the nose for 30 days. And then if the eczema starts to come back, I highly suspect that they’re still colonized and you kind of need to switch up and do other things for treatment because it can be stubborn and you can do swabs. I mean, if you’re really not sure you can swap the nose and get a bacterial culture and see if the staph is still up there, sometimes you may find other stuff up there. There’s fungus up there a lot and other bacteria. So it may not just be a staph problem, but yeah, 30 days beyond seeing anything because staph does not want to go and wants to stay.

Abby:

Yeah. I agree with you. Thank you for that information. And I do agree with you that people should try not to self a home if possible, and find someone who can really help guide your steps because it is a long process and there is a lot of digging into the root cause to look into. And Dr. Julie’s also very helpful as well. So later at the end of this episode, I’ll just ask you to leave your contact and share with listeners about where you practice. Do you have any last words of advice or tips for people who do want to balance their skin pH or, or even anything to do with helping them heal their eczema?

Dr. Julie:

Yeah. So part of the advice I give my patients is pits and palms, right? And what does that mean? So yes, we want, I totally get it. We want to shower daily. I shower daily. We want to feel clean, but ask yourself, if you have eczema and here we call this the antecubital fossa or in the crook of your elbow or behind your knees, how dirty is that area? You know, did you go out and garden or like do something where it’s really dirty and you really need to soap it. Okay. Soap it. But if you really aren’t that dirty, you know, if you haven’t really sweated or gotten super dirty, then try on a daily basis and the shower to just sell pits and palms. So you’re going to soak your armpits. You’re going to soap your groin and your buttocks and the vaginal area, or, you know, the penis, depending on what kind of equipment you’ve got.

Dr. Julie:

Yeah. Soap, all that stuff. You can wash the palms of your hands, especially now, right? We get stuff on our hands that we need to wash it off. Wash the palms of your feet, pits send palms. Those are the aureus that you soap. Otherwise don’t be scrubbing with soap on your area all over your body every day, you know, maybe once a week. So that’s going to help reduce the amount of lipids that you strip off and the amount of pH that, how much you raise it. So that’s one of the first things. And then, you know, think about using some of these natural products and yeah. Remoisturizing at the end and just, you know, hang in there. I know eczema is really, it’s just such a tough disease, even as a parent of a infant or child that has it. It’s almost harder because I think a lot of parents come to me feeling powerless, and a lot of parents are looking like, what’s the food, what’s the one food that’s causing this.

Dr. Julie:

How do I eliminate this? You know, help. And a lot of times it’s really not one food, you know, it’s multi-factorial and this skin barrier problem is a big piece of eczema. And I always tell people like, see a doctor early when patients come to me and it’s just starting, especially on an infant. Sometimes we can fix it just with this work, right? We don’t have to do a lot of other stuff and they haven’t suffered. But you know, when you wait, then exacerbates and it gets a lot worse. It’s going to take a lot longer to heal one, see practitioner and two, hang in there, I’ve seen the worst eczema healed. There are answers. You can find them. This is not a lifelong sentence for you or your children. And we just know a lot more now about how to uncover these root causes and heal eczema. So don’t give up hope. It’s definitely possible to heal it.

Abby:

Thank you, Dr. Julie, you mentioned something really interesting, which was about the showering. And I actually wanted to bring up the no moisture treatment and empty. You may have heard some people talk about it, but I wanted to know your thoughts because with NMT, they don’t shower very often, or some people only shower once or twice a month. Others, you know, they can vary depending on what they choose to do, but I’ve heard so many great things about NMT and just not using any type of moisturizer has helped to repair their barrier. And a lot of people have said that it’s the one thing that has helped their skin the most. So what do you think about that? The no moisture treatment and not showering very often.

Dr. Julie:

So I think that’s a personal choice, right? It can go either way, but I think what is happening is what we’ve been talking about today that when you’re not putting even we talked about even water, right? It’s going to change the pH and it’s going to take you six hours to get back again. So when we’re not doing these things, the skin is really, you know, it’s not meant to be washed on this level. And I’m sure as cave men, you know, we did go months without bathing. Maybe it was winter, right? Who’s going to get into a freezing cold ice stream. You just can’t do it. So our skin is totally able to go without soap and water and moisturizer. And so I think what happens is these people’s skin pH Carex, I think it will naturally acidify their anti-microbial peptides like germ sign-in and defensin are working at full and their liquids are being produced and not stripped off.

Dr. Julie:

So their skin gets healthy. And like we talked about, you know, some of the moisturizers that we’re putting on skin are actually detrimental. So if you’re putting on petroleum-based products, if you’re putting on products with a lot of emulsifier, you might feel moisturized it for a little bit, right after you put it on, but then not emulsifier is working to break down the lipids on your skin. It’s going to leave you worse. So I don’t think it’s for everybody, but I think, you know, you can shower, you can use soap and beneficial things and that’s fine, but I can see how it would work for some people just because we’re working with our biology and our path, our physiology, and that’s our skin is meant to work properly and be healthy when we don’t get in its way. That’s an interesting thought.

Abby:

Yeah, for sure. It’s a really interesting concept that seems to work. And I appreciate that you just shared, you know, the possible theory behind why it works as well. So basically once people finish showering, can they put the whole aloe vera gel on their whole body and then the hydrosol or either the aloe gel on their face in order to balance the pH and then put their creams on after.

Dr. Julie:

Yeah. So I tell people that you want to go in order of like lightest to darkest. Think of, I guess it’s like when we wine tastes, we go from whites to reds. So first you’re going to get out of the shower and you’re going to spray the hydrosol first. That’s just the completely water-based products. So I’ll spray, hydrosol all over my face and body. And it really only takes like 30 to 60 seconds to dry. And then I’ll put the aloe Vera gel all over my face and body. And that again, you know, maybe 60 to 120 seconds a minute or two to dry. And then you’re going to want to put the oil-based thing on top. If you start with the oil, then nothing’s going to be able to get through. So if you start with your like body butter cream or something like that, and then you try to put hydrosol or aloe on it, it’s really just going to sit on top and not do anything. So start with the lightest most water based or hydrophilic, we call it products. And then you end with the oil or lipophyllic products.

New Speaker:

Thank you so much for sharing that. That was a lot of great information that you share today. And I’m sure that our listeners got a lot out of it. My listeners are interested in seeing you for a consultation or even getting in touch with you. How would they go about doing that?

Dr. Julie:

Yes. And you can come to my website, which is integrative dermatology center.com. And as a naturopathic physician, I’m licensed to see patients all over the state of California and all over the state of Washington. So I do even before COVID I was doing a lot of telehealth visits all throughout California and Washington. If they’re not located in one of those two states, I can’t treat them directly, but you can still contact me and I can maybe help find a provider. Or if you have a doctor I can consult with your doctor on your treatment plan and help get them kind of on the right path with your eczema. I’m happy to kind of funnel people towards resources to help them as well.

Abby:

I love that you’re also speaker at the integrative dermatology symposium if I pronounced that correctly. And I don’t know if you want to share more about learnskin or not, if it’s more for practitioners or even patients as well.

Dr. Julie:

Yeah. So learnskin.com is a site. It was started by integrative dermatologists. And so it is a skewed more towards the healthcare professional. So your naturopathic doctor, your dermatologist DOs, you know, certified and registered nutritionist, those kinds of people. But I think, you know, we have just such smart patients who go do a lot of research on their own. And so if you’re a patient who likes to really kind of like get into the science and you know, what are the root cause of things you might want to go, it’s free to become a member. It’s learnskin.com and I’m the program chair of a series that’s about to launch on June 25th called the natural pathic and integrative dermatology series. And it’s 20 course series that you take at your own pace. And we really do deep dives into all of this.

Dr. Julie:

So actually there is a course that I wrote called Skin pH and Skin Disease, where you can see all the eyesight, all the published research to back up this information, and you can take any of the, or all of the 20 courses for free. If you’re a healthcare provider, you can get continuing education credits. And if you’re just a patient interested in the science, go check it out. And then there’s also going to be a class alive masterclass on June 16th, that I’m hosting where it’s called functional and naturopathic medicine testing for German psychological conditions. And I’m going to take healthcare providers through a deep dive on how do I treat like cases and patients, you know, how do I analyze stool tests and organic acid tests? I really look at the gut and the internal health of my patients, particularly the more severe cases. So you can head on over to learnskin.com and check out some of these courses. Again, they won’t be live until June 16th and June 25th, but it’s all free. So just information, if you want to go check it out.

Abby:

Awesome. And if people want to hear you speak as well at the integrative dermatology symposium, and do they just sign up or is it more for a practitioners as well? That

Dr. Julie:

Is more for practitioners. So I’m one of the speakers I’m, I’ll be giving a talk on botanical, like herbal treatments for different skin diseases and presenting published research on that. And we have many wonderful speakers there, everything from MDs to NDAs and nutritionists. And yeah, so it’s, it’s really targeted more towards, I think the healthcare professional, but I know there are patients who are interested in check out these conferences as well. So again, it’s kind of how scientific you want to get as a, and that’s the integrative dermatology symposium that’s being held in the fall and it is virtual this year due to COVID hopefully next year. And we’ll all be able to get back together in-person and in-person conference, but all the sessions are going to either you can attend the live with live Q and a or they’re recorded. So I think that’s a really great resource for healthcare providers who are, want more information about, you know, really getting to the root cause of dermatological problems.

Abby:

That’s so great. Thank you so much for all the resources that you’re putting out there and for all your speaking engagements and even for being on the show, I really appreciate everything that you’re doing and all of the knowledge that you’re spreading with the community. I think it’s so great and that it’s helping a lot of people. So thank you again for being on the show.

Dr. Julie:

Thank you so much for having me and, and for all of your eczemaconquerors.com Work. And I know you’re also helping to support people through eczema and steroid withdrawal, and it’s just a terrible disease and hopefully all working together. We’re going to be able to really move this forward and make this. Hopefully it’s just a thing of the past.