112 | What Causes Eczema and What Helps It?

Well, welcome back to another episode of the Real Health Podcast. We did a new episode this past Monday called Manna Monday, and it's a five minute or less word for the week, phrase for the week, a thought for the week that has to do with building you mentally and spiritually. So, make sure you go back and listen to that if you haven't. Today, we're gonna continue the episode on immune system health through March. March your allergies away, but we're gonna shift gears from allergies, and we're gonna get into the world of eczema.

Eczema is a big issue within our population. We're gonna actually help you understand a little bit about eczema and what's causing- what's driving that and then some solutions for you to reverse, even the worst cases of eczema. Cool stuff coming up. We have our first ever- Dr. Reed, what are we calling it? Are we calling it our mastermind class? Immunity master class. Yeah. So we have our first ever, Dr. Reed's joining me in the studio today as well as our amazing producer, Grant. So we actually have a master class coming up on the immune system.

So this is something new. We're gonna do this through a Zoom webinar. You'll see a link on our Instagram, that you can go to and sign up for our Zoom webinar. This is completely free. We're gonna do one per month.

And the intent of this master class is to help you understand more robustly the system of the body. So this month is gonna be the immune system. So we're gonna talk about how the immune system, when it's overactive, causes, autism, how it's linked to, eczema, how it's linked to autoimmunity, and how to heal the immune system. So if it's been- if you've struggled with mold or mycotoxins or vaccine injuries or whatever the case may be, if you wanna heal the gut, heal the immune system, then this is an amazing, amazing master class. It'll be under an hour, and there'll be a Q and A session with it as well.

So we'll do that all through Zoom. It'll be a Zoom webinar. When you sign up, we are going to give away for every every month that we do it. We're doing a- just a- we're just gonna bless the community. This month, the giveaway is a free food allergy test.

So free food allergy test. So if you sign up and you're part of the Zoom webinar, and we'll have some questions that you'll that we'll ask throughout the, the master class. We will pick one person, and we will gift you a free food allergy test. So make sure you check us out on our social media, Instagram specifically, and you'll see a link to sign up for our Zoom webinar this month. Hey, doc.

Do you remember what date that is? Yep. 25th. March 25th. March 25th.

And we'll do that at what time? 6:30. 6:30 PM. Alright. That's Eastern Standard Time here in the States.

So you Aussies out there that listen, which is, like, 10% of our podcast listeners, if not more, that may be I don't know. What is it? Early or late? Not sure. Let's dive into the immune system.

That's beyond me. Alright. Today, we're talking about eczema. Eczema is also called atopic dermatitis. It presents in a lot of different ways, but pretty much it's, gonna present as, like, red, rashy, irritated skin, typically on, like, the flexor surfaces of the body, but we can see it just about anywhere.

We see it a lot in kids. We see it a lot in adults too. It is closely tied to a immune system dysfunction. And what we talked about last episode is that there's a key breakdown that happens and it's in what we call oral tolerance. Oral tolerance, which is the immune system's ability to recognize food and environmental allergens as harmless rather than harmful.

And then the body, if it recognizes as harmful, will start attacking them as threats and it creates this inflammatory process that contributes to eczema. So let's talk about the first cause of eczema. The first cause of eczema, number one, is it is an oral tolerance breakdown, which is which is going to be driven into food reactions. Oral tolerance breaks down and creates food sensitivities. There's a part of the gut called the GALT or the gut associated lymph tissue, and this plays a major role in training the immune system to tolerate foods.

But as the gut barrier breaks down and is compromised, how how does the gut barrier break down? Poor diet, stress, toxins, infections, excessive antibiotics, and we'll even talk about, excessive hygiene, but the intestine, the barrier of it, that barrier breaks down and it becomes more permeable. And what it does is it leaks larger food proteins into the blood that the immune system then starts to mistake as, like, a foreign invader and and attacks those particular food proteins, creating now a systemic inflammatory response. And then over time, this, like, chronic low grade inflammatory response starts to activate the immune system that then triggers more inflammation and it can cause, in essence, eczema flares particularly that we see on the skin. If we see a child's skin that's red and inflamed, that same that same visual has to be looked at with every organ in the body including the brain.

If their skin is that way, their brain is under the same attack. If their skin looks like that, their liver is. If their skin's like that, their gut is. So we're not just talking about the skin, we're talking about a systemic immune inflammatory response. To heal eczema is never an outside in perspective.

The concepts by which we practice, Dr. Reed and I, the way we see the human body is that healing can only come from inside out, never outside in. You're not gonna heal eczema outside in. You're gonna heal eczema inside out. Now number two, with the oral tolerance breakdown, then we have a food triggered immune response. This is really built around what's called the TH2 immune system.

We're not gonna get too heady into this today. Save that for the Zoom webinar, and we'll talk a lot about TH2 dominance and autoimmunity or TH2 dominance and autism, TH2 dominance and fill in the blank. But today, just to kinda help frame this out, what we're trying to do in healing eczema is lower the TH2 immune system response. Your body should have a balanced TH2 and TH1 immune system. But in most eczema cases, we have a very dominant TH2 immune system.

There are other foods, certain foods, that are highly involved in food, related reactions that drive eczema. So if you were to give the short list, it's gluten, dairy, eggs, processed sugars, and hydrogenated oils. Those are gonna be your big, you know, immune system inflammatory proteins or fat from hydrogenated oils that can lead to a susceptible immune system. K? Now the chronic exposure of these food proteins, so if we don't remove them and a lot of times, they're exposed to them at birth, but if we don't remove these food proteins, they will never really heal the body.

Food is not the issue. Oral tolerance is the issue. But food can be the gateway to unlocking the body's ability to heal by reducing that inflammatory load. The third issue so we have loss of oral tolerance. Number two, development of food reactions.

Number three, now we have a gut skin access issue. So the gut and skin play a major role. Think of it this way, the skin is the external barrier, the gut is the internal barrier. When the gut internal barrier is broken, typically the external barrier is broken as well. They're very similar in terms of protection.

The major issue with the digestive system or the gut and where it goes into a eczema flare, an inflammatory response to the body has to do so much with the diversity of the bacteria of the gut and chronic infections that are undetected. So what does this look like? It really looks like the microbiome of, you know, trillions of bacteria in the gut are just sitting there, creating these, anti inflammatory molecules and this and the one specifically is called butyrate or butyric acid. It's one of the most powerful immune modulating molecules that we'll spend more time about talking at our immune master class later this month. But the gut bacteria produces anti inflammatory molecules that heals your body.

When we don't have the necessary gut bacteria, why? Because of antibiotic usage, the gut microbiome starts to get depleted and there's the potential for food, sorry, pathogens to actually increase like viruses, parasites, other bacteria, fungus or yeast can grow in the digestive system and create a systemic inflammatory response to even, even the gut. A healthy microbiome also helps decrease that TH2 immune system response. So when we don't have a healthy gut bacteria, we get more TH2 dominance, which again is more of the inflammatory part to the immune system in regards to allergies and eczema. And then when gut bacteria are imbalanced, inflammation can increase systemically that leads to a skin barrier breakdown and dysfunction.

When we, number four, look at systemic inflammation in the skin barrier, chronic inflammation from food sensitivities and poor oral tolerance, the two things we just talked about, can weaken the skin barrier. And the the skin barrier is also important to care for. Although the issue is internal, we still want to protect our skin by using healthy moisturizers. One of my favorite things to use is coconut oil. Shea butter is great as well.

But in a lot of these cases, with our with these kids that we're caring for, we are telling them to use super hydrating formulas like cocoa butter or coconut oil. And we even have this colloidal silver gel that we infuse into those salves, which is a colloidal silver antibacterial, and it's a high glutathione based product. And those two can really help heal the skin barrier. So not only do we want to support internal, but we do wanna support the external in most eczema cases. In a compromised skin barrier, what it does is actually allows allergens, irritants, bacteria to to penetrate more easily through the skin.

A lot of these cases will start to see, staph infection show up or it does lead for the potential of other, bacterial pathogens to enter the body even through the skin. When we, look at this TH2 dominant immune system and, you know, what are what are some factors involved. Right? We kinda went through the the the breakdown of, you know, one two three four. Here's what happens.

This is what's driving the eczema. But why? How did the immune system ever get so, you know, overreactive? And so here's here's some of the big things. Right?

When I sit down with a patient and I ask them, hey. Yes or no. Was it a c section birth or a vaginal birth? Typically, it's a c section birth. Was it a, vaginal birth, but were you on antibiotics?

Was there any antibiotics used? And typically, we see it as being yes. What was the mother's immune system during pregnancy? There's incredible data that shows when the mother is TH2 dominant, the baby is actually TH2 dominant. And that's why we see, not usually with the first one, but usually with the second child or a third child, there's a progressive TH2 immune system response with each child leading to a greater predisposition for those children to develop the second, third, or fourth to eczema, allergies, food reactions, neurodevelopment disorders, fill in the blank.

So c section, antibiotic usage, lack of breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is one of the best ways to give the child, a immunoglobulin, secretory IgA, that helps develop their immune system or immune tolerance. We use, not just antibiotics at birth, but then excessive antibiotics for ear infections and and colds and flus and unnecessary interventions, a lot of times with the chronic antibiotic usage. So we typically check those boxes in that patient history. And then we don't allow our kids out anymore.

So they're actually it's what we call the hygiene hypothesis. What we find is that the children are playing in the dirt. They're not eating dirt. They're not they're not in the kind of the pollen environment. They're in this, like, sterile home playing video games or on their iPads, and they're not actually being exposed to viruses and pathogens and dirt and bacteria to actually help build an immune system.

And I'll just tell you this too. Even even at an early age, we were exposing our children to little allergens too, like, a little bit of egg, a little bit of gluten, you know, a little bit of dairy, because you also don't wanna devoid these kids of these food proteins that are common reactive foods in our environment that then leads them to develop reactions to those foods later on. You actually wanna microdose those at early ages to help create immune tolerance to those foods. So let's dive in now and let's talk through so there's the story. There's the why.

There's the cause, the what. Let's talk through the solution, how? How are we going to improve eczema or the child's immune system's response, loss of oral tolerance? Number one, we gotta heal the gut. We gotta repair the gut lining, heal the digestive system, gut healing foods, probiotics.

We talk about butyrate as being huge at helping the digestive system heal. Number two, we have to remove the inflammatory foods. Do what you a lot of times in these eczema cases, we're doing food allergy tests. For this month, we are doing a $50 discount on all food allergy testing. Reach out to the office.

It's a easy just finger prick, quick test, find out which foods you're reacting to. Remove those foods and calm down that inflammatory response. Number three, not only do we wanna heal the gut, but we will really want to support specifically the microbiome of the gut. Fiber, healthy fats, and use a ton of probiotics, specifically spore based probiotics are fantastic. We wanna, number four, enhance the skin barrier.

Enhance the skin barrier. So use that glutathione silver gel I talked about. Use shea butter. Use coconut oil to really help the skin barrier heal. Number five, we wanna use supplements.

Supplements are massive. One of my some of my favorite supplements. Ready for them? Colostrum. Powdered colostrum gives immunoglobulins to the body to help balance that TH2 dominant immune system.

It also gives the, these, like, growth factors that enable the digestive system to heal. So, colostrum is one of my favorites. Fat soluble vitamins, a d e k, are a fantastic supplement to help regulate immune system health. Omega three fatty acids reduce inflammation, so fish oil is great. We want to look at even nutrients, like zinc.

Zinc is a great immune system support. Vitamin c is great immune system support. But a lot of times, when looking through these, number five, we have we have to look at, potential pathogens. Are there parasites? Are is there, harmful bacteria in the digestive system that we have to clear out?

So in some of these cases, we're having to do a stool sample to really dive a little bit deeper. But in most cases, in most cases, if you were to, drive digestive health, reduce inflammatory foods, if you were to enhance the skin barrier, if you were to help regulate immune system supplementation and get your, kids or get yourself adjusted chiropractic care, you will for sure start moving the needle in the right direction. And when if you do all that and all else fails, if you only get a certain percentage of improvement, you gotta test. Test those food reactions, test the stool to final infections, and then dive a little bit more into functional medicine as a route to heal, where you might be kinda lacking. So eczema's- it seems complicated, but it's really simple.

It's all about just building oral tolerance again, healing the gut, healing the skin barrier, and calming down that systemic inflammatory response. Just a reminder, don't forget to sign up for our Zoom webinar, our immune system master class, where we talk about the connection between the immune system and autoimmunity, the immune system, and autism, the immune system, and so many other chronic diseases in our culture, and how to heal the immune system. And we will do that at no cost whatsoever. You can sign up for free. Check out our social media, Instagram.

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