Many of us with skin conditions often have deeper issues that we are unaware of, such as digestive problems. Today's guest is here to shed light on that, as well as explain how castor oil can be a beneficial tool to improve gut and skin health.
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My guest today is Dr. Marisol Teijeiro, ND. She is a world leader renowned for her passion for cleansing and gut health, not only because she has the degree on the wall, but more so because she's experienced feeling sh*tty and figured out the hierarchy on how to get healthy.
Crowned the Queen of Thrones™ for over 15 years, Dr. Marisol has trained and educated health care practitioners and has helped thousands of patients transition from SH*T SHOW to OWNING their throne. Dr. Marisol directs and practices at Sanas Health Practice in Canada, has spearheaded PuraSanas health supplements, and invented the Queen of Thrones Organic Castor Oil Pack™ and line of products.
Join us as we discuss the importance of pooping daily for skin health, as well as how castor oil can be beneficial for those of us with skin rash issues.
Have you tried castor oil packs for digestive/skin health? Let me know in the comments!
In this episode:
- How can the skin be impacted by what's happening in your digestive system?
- How do castor oil packs work and how do they help?
- What effect does stress have on the skin?
- Can castor oil help to relieve constipation?
Quotes
“Pooping is so, so very important. If you're not going daily, things are backing up in your system and that backup goes directly to the liver and directly into the skin.” [4:48]
“Castor oil packs help with the absorption, the digestion, and the elimination. It's huge on helping with elimination. Castor oil packs are a source of all your essential fats.” [6:18]
Links
Legends of the Throne: FREE poop guide download
Find Dr. Marisol on Instagram | Facebook | YouTube
094: Could Castor Oil Help Your Skin? w/ Dr. Marisol Teijeiro FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jennifer: Thank you so much Dr. Marisol for joining us. And one of the things that I love about you is that you are super into digestion, which is something we share. And you also have this, you have this interesting product line that revolves around castor oil, which I get a lot of questions about castor oil, so we'll talk about that in a moment. But I wanted to start off with, from your clinical experience working with patients and all of the things that you've done in your professional career, how can the skin be impacted by what's happening in your digestive system?
Dr. Marisol: Oh, it's such a great question, Jen. And honestly, it's so funny because I have patients come to see me and they'll be having skin problems and the first thing I start to question them about is about how they're going to the bathroom. Because, to me, your stools is the number one product of your body, not the number two. It's the number one product in your body that it can actually tell you what's going on, on your inside, and in specific, your digestion. And any type of skin problems is 100% connected to the health of your gut. Whether this is an autoimmune skin condition like a psoriasis, or if it's an acne, or an eczema, dermatitis, 100% of the time it is connected and correlated to your gut health. So we have to work on the gut health in order to fix up the skin. And I'm sure you've seen this in your practice too.
Jennifer: Absolutely. I mean, digestion is a huge piece to the puzzle. And what's interesting is that some people even have no digestive issues whatsoever and yet, when we've gone and taken a look at, say, a stool study, it comes back demonstrating that there's unfriendly bugs living in the gut, digestive factors missing, all sorts of things. And so that's where I'm really curious for you, what do you think is the number one thing that someone listening, if they're still on the fence about whether they need to pay attention to their digestion because the skin symptoms are they're just so crazy that they're driving them nuts and that feels like the only thing that they really should be paying attention to, what is something that they could actually do or should start doing that would be beneficial if they're beginning to maybe open and expand into tuning into the gut?
Dr. Marisol: 100% of the time, Jen, I'm going to say a castor oil pack.
Jennifer: Okay.
Dr. Marisol: And let me tell you why. For those who don't know, a castor oil pack is an eclectic therapy. It's a therapy that's been used, gosh, since the beginning of mankind. It dates back all the way before Christ. It's pretty much an incredible treatment. Some people say it's mythical, but it's just there's reports of it in traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic Indian forms of medicine, the Egyptians used it, the Romans used it, the Greek used it. And the reason why this castor oil pack, which is basically a compress, which is saturated with castor oil and placed on top of your liver underneath of your right ribcage and typically worn at bedtime overnight. Super, super simple to do, especially now with my Queen of the Thrones Castor Oil Pack.
Dr. Marisol: This simple, simple treatment does five very important things that support our entire foundation for health. And this foundation of health, if it's not supported, you can be taking all the potions, putting on all the lotions on your skin topically, taking supplements, eating great food, doing all of these different things, but if you don't have these five pillars supported, your process to healing is going to take a very, very long time and it's going to be a big struggle. And I found myself in a big struggle when I was in naturopathic school in my third year and it was finally when I finally decided to start doing the castor oil packs. And I was in that same boat, I was doing everything right. I was eating the right diet, I was taking the right supplements, I was exercising, all the lifestyle parts that they tell you to do. But what I was missing was these five foundations. And I have it split up now into a really cool and easy to remember acronym known as the word FAITH. I love it.
Jennifer: Perfect.
Dr. Marisol: Literally, FAITH. And I feel it's almost like bringing back the faith that you have in your body to be able to heal and to be able to give you your best life. So this is the key. So number one, F, is for the function of the digestive tract. We absolutely need to have really good digestion, so breakdown of food. We need to be able to actually absorb our food properly, for it not to be just absorbing into the tissues but actually breaking down and being absorbed and those nutrients going to where they need to go to act. We need to be eliminating properly. Absolutely. Pooping is so, so very important. If you're not going daily, things are backing up in your system and that backup goes directly to the liver and directly into the skin. So this is a huge, huge issue. So function of the digestive tract, we need to have not only digestion working good, but absorption and elimination.
Dr. Marisol: Then A stands for antioxidant status. We need to have a good amount of healthy antioxidants in our body so that we can fight off things like free radical damage, which is basically like little bombs exploding in our body. And these things happen. Because we're bombarded by different toxins and different things that really don't belong in our body. So we need this protection. And the castor oil pack, what's incredible about it, is that it is a source of essential fatty acids like Omega Six Omega Nine. It's even the source of prostaglandins, which are the end result of taking your oral fish oils. It also supports vitamin E. It supports glutathione production, which is a master detoxification agent. And when you do a pack, you actually stimulate hormone oxytocin, which is the love and connection molecule, which makes you feel well, and you stimulate something called dopamine, which is a satisfaction molecule.
Dr. Marisol: So you can imagine, you feel really good when you do these packs and you're getting all of these antioxidants to help. So we did F, which is function of the digestive tract. Castor oil packs help with the absorption, the digestion, and the elimination. It's huge on helping with elimination. Castor oil packs are a source of all your essential fats. So, if you are a person who has problems digesting or absorbing fats, which FYI happens a lot with people who have skin problems. I'm sure you've seen that in practice.
Jennifer: Yes.
Dr. Marisol: That they have a problem with absorption of fats, and even in their toilets, they might have an oil slick with their stools or their stools are floating. That's a big sign of malabsorption of fats. So I've used in my clinical practice castor oil packs topically as a way for people to start to get these essential fats into their body. And then when that starts happening, things start to heal from the outside in and then they can start to take orally more oils and then that helps them to speed up their healing process pretty significantly actually. So F and A, and then we move into I, which is inflammation. Inflammation, everyone thinks it's a bad thing and it is bad if it's out of control because then it's a wild raging fire, and then we don't want it.
Dr. Marisol: But inflammation is also purposeful to help our bodies to heal. So we actually want a balance between strong inflammation and not so much inflammation, strong inflammation, and not so much inflammation. But the problem is that so many of us are just stuck in high and high grade inflammatory processes. One really key sign I always like to tell patients about is, number one, redness in the body. So if we're talking about skin, if there's acne, if it's very red, if there's eczema, it's very red, then you know you have constant inflammation in your body. From a physical perspective also, people who have a lot of swelling in their abdomen, so if they're gaining all their weight in their belly, that's a lot of central, it's called central obesity, but it's a lot of inflammation in the belly.
Dr. Marisol: And what your body does is, it's no different than a fireman. A fireman, when there's fire, they put water on the fire. It's as easy as that, and your body will grab water and place it where there's fire and inflammation because that will help to relax and calm the inflammation. Castor oil packs and castor oil, they reduce inflammation. That's actually one of its claims to fames. So not only can you do a castor oil pack, which will help to internally change the inflammation processes that are happening in the gut, in the body, in general, in the skin, but you can also apply Castro topically on acne. We do a face wash with castor oil, which basically also replaces your moisturizing part of your regime because it just leaves the skin so moisturized and reducing the inflammation pretty significantly. We'll do a different castor oil clay masks, a variety of different things, cause castor oil will always help to pull down that inflammation.
Dr. Marisol: If someone has an eczema or a psoriasis, castor oil is excellent to apply topically. You can even take it a next step up and add in baking soda one-to-one and make it into a paste or a cream. And then what you can get is an awesome topical salve, which will really heal most things. You can put that on psoriasis, on eczema, on dermatitis, on baby diaper rash, even on ringworm, fungal toenails, or dandruff. So it's just a really, really good tool for that just for balancing the inflammation. So again, the little acronym about castor oil and castor oil packs, FAITH, function of the digestive tract, absorption, elimination and digestion, A, improving your antioxidant status, I, regulate inflammation, and then T is tension and stress. We live in a society that is 24-7, go, go, go. Right?
Jennifer: Absolutely. And it's a huge factor for people that are dealing with skin problems because I feel like, number one, stress is a trigger, but also, two, you become stressed out as a result of having flares or worrying about flares or what people are saying or thinking about you. So stress is a huge component here.
Dr. Marisol: 100%. And the thing is this, is that when you're over driving on stress and you maintain yourself in the stress state all the time, it's almost impossible and very, very hard to heal. And this is where castor oil packs, not the castor, but this is actually the actual physical action of putting on a castor oil pack. This is major claim to fame, is that when you put it onto the body, on the liver, underneath the right rib cage, it's like an automatic escape button to move you into the relaxed state, which is amazing. And we recommend people to do it before bed because then that way they are in a completely relaxed state. So, number one, they train their body by practicing and repeating the packs. Every night they train the body to get into the relaxed state.
Dr. Marisol: So then later on, when you have stressful parts of your day, you get better and getting into the relaxed state. So you train your body, get into the relaxed state at bedtime. You sleep like a dream. And what I didn't tell you, that when you sleep, you actually do the majority of your detoxification plan in cleaning and healing. The liver is the most active between the hours of 1:00 and 3:00 a.m. in the morning. And so if we are in a deep, deep, deep regenerative sleep, that's where our body's going to clean the best, eliminate the best, no remove out all the toxins out of the body, really get things processed properly, and getting ready to clear those things out. And that has a major impact on the health and the appearance of your skin, because the more irritated when you wake up in the morning your skin is probably the the least you slept [inaudible 00:11:52] right?
Jennifer: Yeah.
Dr. Marisol: And then the more inflammation that you have and the least you are able to cleanse and detox at nighttime. So it's such a major, major action. Just do this one pack, which takes no more than two minutes and your nighttime routine now with the Castor Oil Queen of Thrones pack. It takes no more than two minutes, super quick, and it helps to get your body that deep, restful, regenerative sleep where you can heal, you can cleanse. And most people then wake up and get into the practice of pooing in the morning, because it helps the elimination. And then you're eliminating all that stuff that was in your system and if you didn't eliminate it, it'd just be recirculating back up and feeding back into your skin. So another huge, huge win for these castor oil packs is just the entrainment of the relaxation response. Because, like you said, people with skin problems, you're looking at your condition every single day. It's very hard and you don't know what judgments are about you out there.
Dr. Marisol: You try to avoid them, but still, those things are hard to not take to heart. It's just difficult. So practicing how to get into the relaxed will only help you heal faster and feel better about yourself faster, so that's super key.
Jennifer: The other thing I wanted to actually ask you too is, there's a lot of folks that listen to this show who struggle with pooping consistently.
Dr. Marisol: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jennifer: So they're really stuck in a more constipative state where they're going less than once a day, or if they do go, it's like little pebbles or they really strain and struggle to have a full elimination. Have you found in your practice and with using the castor oil packs that this can also be beneficial for helping to aid in elimination without the need for laxatives?
Dr. Marisol: 100%. Castor oil mimics the prostaglandin E3, which actually stimulates smooth muscle. So that's basically the moving of your intestine and that makes you go to the bathroom better. So castor oil packs have actually been tested clinically in Europe in comparison to conventional laxatives, and they've been found to be as good as conventional laxatives without the pain, without the uncomfortableness of having to have a rush or being gassy or bloated or any of those signs. And over time, castor oil packs with the practice and the training of your body into the relaxed state, these castor oil packs actually help to retrain your body to know how to poo properly, which is wonderful. So it's a really, really key thing. Pooping is life. If you go to the bathroom every single day, you are in health.
Dr. Marisol: That is the number one measure for health, if you go to the bathroom every day, if it's healthy, if it sinks, it's a long stool. These are the things that we're looking for. And when that is off, everything is off. Your skin is off, your body is off, depending on what your weakness point is. For many people listening here, it's their skin. So when they're not going to the bathroom properly, their skin is going to be a problem. And skin is worse the less you go to the bathroom. So that's just a common reaction.
Jennifer: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dr. Marisol: And along with that, this is a key thing too, remember I said the word was FAITH? The last letter's H, and castor oil packs help to support you being the best host possible. So we all know that we're like a host for trillions of bacteria in our body and on our skin. Many of these bacterias can contribute to skin conditions, skin problems, but the microbiome in our bodies actually is an organ system on its own that helps with regulation of our immune system, helps our entire body function and flow well. Castor oil packs actually break down something called biofilm, which is like a barrier that bad bacteria creates so that they are impermeable and protected from antimicrobials or from being basically killed off and removed out of the body, which keeps you constantly taking probiotics and not really getting anywhere with your gut health or even that skin changing.
Dr. Marisol: But these castor oil packs, they create the space and they create the openness and they clear out that biofilm so that you can actually have good antimicrobial effect and reset and recreate a good microbiome, and as an end result of that, poop even better, which is great. So it's like an all in one. Those five pillars again, function in the digestive tract, digestion, absorption, going to the bathroom properly. Number two, antioxidant status, improving your fats in your system, which are so important to skin. Skin is made up of a lipophilic, so it's like an all fatty barrier. If you don't have good essential oils or fats in your body, if you're not absorbing them well, there's no way that your skin can be healthy.
Dr. Marisol: There's, of course, balance of inflammation, which is a key problem in conditions and diseases. There's reduction of stress and tension and helping your body to practice the relaxed state. And then there's, you becoming the best host and having the best bacteria in your body so you can have ultimate health. So these packs are no joke. It's my number one prescription for every single one of my patients who comes in, a castor oil pack typically with probiotics. And then depending on what is going on in their system, maybe more alkalinizers, maybe more [inaudible 00:17:07] depends on their digestion. But every single patient, every single one of them starts with a castor oil pack and a probiotic, because if you miss these steps, time to cure, time to heal, takes so long. And frankly, we're also stressed and don't have time if you want it to happen now, right?
Jennifer: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Marisol: So that's the thing, right?
Jennifer: Yes. Well, I will have to tell you, I am really excited to share this with everybody because I think something like castor oil could be a real game changer for a lot of people listening and something that they haven't heard before. Look, I get it, a lot of times we just want to alleviate the symptoms and then start working on the other deeper reasons why we have these issues. And if this gets you to that point where at least your symptoms are more manageable and more tolerable and now you can start digging deeper into the other underlying reasons why and it's also helping support that process, it's fantastic.
Dr. Marisol: It's major.
Jennifer: So I just want to thank you so much Dr. Marisol and also too, you do have these great packs, which I think are fantastic to be able to use, especially for people who are really struggling. You've got a really great downloadable guide to look at what's going on with your digestive system. You call it Legends of the Throne, which is very cute.
Dr. Marisol: The Queen of Thrones.
Jennifer: Yes, yes, absolutely. And then too, we'll also link up to where people can check out your shop and all of these castor oil opportunities that they can try out for themselves because I think it's a really great, easy thing to be able to do at home.
Dr. Marisol: And one thing just to note, just for everyone to make sure to always buy castor oil in a glass bottle because it is such an important oil that goes into your body, goes into your skin, and it's a carrier oil, it's the best carrier oil for essential oils. But if it's nonorganic or if it's in a plastic bottle, you're bringing in a lot of chemicals and that can be detrimental to treatments. I just want to highlight that because it's very difficult to find glass bottle castor oil and if you have castor oil at home and it's in plastic, please dump it and go online and get yourself some of the Queen of the Thrones extra virgin, cold pressed, organic, the best of the best quality. Because this is an inexpensive therapy that people can do, which will help them longterm like no other treatment will. And long term, it'll get them off so many other supplements that they'll be able to go onto a base protocol, which will keep them happy, living legendary and just feeling the best they possibly can be.
Jennifer: Perfect. Perfect. And everybody can also find you at drmarisol.com.
Dr. Marisol: Yeah.
Jennifer: And you're on Instagram as well. I'm going to put all of the links to everything that people can check out, including your book, in our show notes. That way it's easy for all of the listeners to find. Thank you, Dr. Marisol so much for joining us.
Dr. Marisol: Thank you so much, Jen. It's been a blast and blessings to everybody.
