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Natural liver detox remedies and cleanses are all the rage online – especially if you’ve had chronic skin problems.
While poor liver detox can contribute to skin inflammation symptoms, it’s critical that you ask WHY is your liver struggling.
That way, a natural liver detox remedy or diet cleanse doesn’t trigger a flare-up (which can and does happen).
When you ask why there’s so much skin inflammation, you’ll discover that the balance of your gut-skin axis plays a HUGE role in throwing your liver’s detox capacity over the edge.
So in today’s episode, I’m sharing an interview that I did on Resiliency Radio hosted by Dr. Jill Carnahan where we dive into ways to support and optimize natural liver detox, how to reduce fatty liver (especially for those with psoriasis), the liver-gut-skin-axis connections, and the emotional toll that skin issues can cause.
If you’re newer to figuring out our root causes, THIS GUIDE is a great place to start.
So let’s dive in!
Or, listen on your favorite app: iTunes (Apple Podcasts) | Spotify | Stitcher | TuneIn | Subscribe on Android
In This Episode:
- Why overloaded liver detox pathways can make skin inflammation worse
- The key nutrients to boost natural liver detox
- Common signs of a hidden skin infection and when to see a doctor
- How elimination diets can harm your relationship with food
- The emotional toll chronic skin conditions take
- Connection between cytokines in chronic skin inflammation + biologic drugs
- Interplay between nervous system regulation + calming skin flare-ups
- How imbalances within the gut-skin axis trigger skin inflammation
- How to reduce fatty liver (especially if you have psoriasis)
Quotes
“People think skin issues are just cosmetic, but they don't realize the pain and trauma that come with it—especially when others judge you based on how you look.”
“You can't predict your skin. One day it’s inflamed and painful, the next it's cracking and bleeding. That unpredictability is what breaks people mentally and emotionally.”
Links
My Favorite Natural Liver Detox Support Products
Stop My Rashes eGuide (Free Resource)
Healthy Skin Show ep. 305: Eliminations Diets, Food Fear + Healing Skin Rashes {NEW RESEARCH}
Healthy Skin Show ep. 177: Liver Detox – Skin Rash Connection, Part 1
Healthy Skin Show ep. 157: How Your Immune System Can Trigger Skin Rashes w/ Heather Zwickey, PhD
377: Natural Liver Detox Tips That Rebalance The Gut-Skin Connection (For Chronic Skin Problems) {FULL TRANSCRIPT}
Welcome back to episode 377 of the Healthy Skin Show podcast! In today’s episode, we’re switching things up to share an interview I did on the Resiliency Radio podcast hosted by Dr. Jill Carnahan. We dive into a bunch of different topics, including the connections between liver detox imbalances that contribute to skin problems, gut-skin axis, the important role medications can play in healing, how to view inflammation that drives symptoms and disease, skin inflammation, natural liver detox warnings, and so much more!
Dr. Jill graciously agreed to let me share our episode on my show! Not only is she such a brilliant and caring physician, but I’m grateful for her friendship over the years as well as the invitation to come on her show.
So without further ado, let’s dive in!
Jill Carnahan (04:05)
Today, I am absolutely delighted to introduce my friend, Jen Fugo. She is a clinical nutritionist who supports adults who failed conventional medicine to beat chronic skin conditions such as eczema, psoriasis, rosacea, dandruff, hives, and many other things we're going to talk about today. In her virtual practice, she founded her own line of skincare and supplements available at www.QuellShop.com and is the “host with the most” of the Healthy Skin Show podcast with over 1.1 million downloads. Welcome to the show!
Jennifer Fugo (05:12)
Thank you for having me. I'm so excited and honored to be here.
Jill Carnahan (05:16)
Yes. I mean we've just been friends and followed each other's kind of pathways in the background for a lot long while. I always love to start with background story like how did you get into this area? Do you have any personal stories or reasons that you got into skin?
Jennifer Fugo (05:30)
Unfortunately, yes, I do. My the reason that I ended up specializing, I guess, in these chronic skin conditions is because when I was in the midst of my master's program, I developed something called dyshidrotic eczema on my hands. And what that is a very specific type of eczema for those who might not realize that impacts the palms and sometimes also the bottom of the feet. But I just had it on the palms of my hands and you get these weird kind of clear little blisters and the skin really dries out, it flares up. The blisters eventually break and it's oozy and awful and painful and so itchy. And then it dries up and the cycle starts again. And this began in the midst of. I was already gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free for 6 years.
Jennifer Fugo (06:24)
At that point, I had really led a non-toxic organic lifestyle. I was doing all the right things except I had taken on this huge endeavor of going back for a master's program full-time while working full-time. And I have never had so much suffering in my life. I'm not comparing it to other people because I know, Dr. Jill, you've gone through a lot of health situations yourself, but you don't realize a lot of times how much you use a part of your body until it, you can't, you know, like you can't wash your hair, you can't wash your hands because water burns so badly. You can't go to the gym because the weights actually tear your skin. And so my skin became thinner and thinner as I went through these cycles.
Jennifer Fugo (07:16)
The dermatologist was like, well, just put some steroid cream on and then cover it with Vaseline. And I was like, oh, okay. How do I. I mean, it's my hands, right? How do I get through my day? I have cats, I have things I need to do. So it became very challenging for me to function. I'd wake up in the middle of the night with blood on the sheets because I found that I was scratching myself in the middle of the night while asleep. It just was really awful. And it wasn't until my husband was like, maybe you should start thinking about this from a different perspective. What if you were your client? What are some of the things that you might actually look at? And it took time. And honestly, people are like, what'd you do to make it go away?
Jennifer Fugo (08:03)
And I wouldn't even want you to do that because I know so much more now. What. I'm not even sure why what I did worked, but that created a lot of empathy for me to realize that, yes, we have various conditions, like thyroid conditions, where we suffer a lot of times in silence and in private. People can't necessarily see that you have this condition that impacts so many different body functions. But when it is literally on your skin, especially areas that are forward facing, like the palms of your hands, where somebody can like kind of dive out of shaking your hand because they see that you look almost like you're infected with something or it's on your face or somewhere visible, it does a tremendous amount of damage to your sense of confidence.
Jennifer Fugo (08:53)
And again, everyone thinks either you don't know how to clean yourself, you're not using the right soap, you have some sort of infection that you're neglecting. They don't understand the level of pain and suffering that you go through trying to manage this highly uncontrollable skin situation, because you really don't know what type of skin you're going to wake up to and on any given day. And so that was what ultimately sparked my curiosity. And as I dove deeper into it, I realized the way that we approach skin from a more integrative perspective was kind of limited because everyone sort of lumped it in with autoimmune disease. And that was where, I don't know, all the research, all the interviews. I mean, I have like over 350 episodes of the Healthy Skin Show.
Jennifer Fugo (09:45)
You're on the Healthy Skin show too, talking about various things that we don't necessarily think could be connected to chronic skin issues that really complicate it, I think, and separate it from other conditions, like, say, celiac disease or Hashimoto's and other autoimmune conditions. And so we talk all about eczema, psoriasis, rosacea. I mean, even, like, I also had Hidradenitis Suppurativa, also known as HS. And so a lot of these conditions, people suffer in silence. There's a lot of shame. And so I've made it my mission to help people figure out what some of these root causes are so that they can begin using, if they would like, to, a combination of conventional and integrative options to hopefully speed the process along. Because I don't think we're here to just, like, suffer through life. I think that we are here to live life right.
Jennifer Fugo (10:41)
Being there as a mom, a parent, a caregiver, a daughter, a son, a friend, a coworker. We have all these other roles in life that are so important. So I just want to empower people to be able to bring things to their derms, to ask better questions, to get better results, and to utilize the best tools that work for them to ultimately help the skin symptoms hopefully calm down and even potentially resolve entirely.
Jill Carnahan (11:10)
Jen, I love that, and I really am sorry you had to suffer, but clearly it's giving you a passion for this topic, and it's interesting. One of the reasons I am so happy to have you on this show and personally so proud of the work you're doing is because I was like you. I had the severe dyshidrotic eczema as a child. I would scratch and bleed on my. Like, when you talk about your story, that could have been me. I totally understand. And the hands, like you said, you can't do anything. I remember wearing, like, cotton gloves to bed with the Vaseline and the steroid. Right. Because that's the only way you couldn't scratch yourself to death. And then, like you do in the middle of the night, you'd pull them off because you wouldn't know.
Jill Carnahan (11:41)
The itch is so bad sometimes that you'd still. I just remember that so well. I can relate to every point. And then after the mold and the issues there, I had horrible periorbital dermatitis that looked like I was, like, so diseased. And like you said, I always felt like. I mean, that's a billboard. And here I am supposed to be a doctor. The eczema was before I was a physician. Some of the eye stuff was after. I'm like, how in the world can people trust me if I look like I can't take care of myself? Because they don't know the whole story. So thank you for being a leader in this field. Where do we start with this? As we know, there's like, membranes and permeability and gut. But what give us kind of an overview of.
Jill Carnahan (12:16)
Because their skin stuff often is connected to similar things. Maybe look, skin and overview, and then we go deeper into specifics.
Jennifer Fugo (12:22)
Yeah, I would say that. I think what complicates skin is that there's usually a combination of root causes going on. It's not usually just one thing. So a lot of times you go to the derm, they give you meds, you may or may not want to go that route, and I respect that. Everybody's choices their own. And usually the first thing is, like, getting rid of any kind of, like, toxic chemicals. Your cleaning products, your laundry detergent, your body care products. You try and swap those all out. And a lot of times people won't find that to be sufficient. So then they're possibly rehoming their pets.
Jennifer Fugo (13:01)
Tearing out carpeting from their home. They're trying to do everything in the external environment to address this, because that's what they think will ultimately get things to stop. And then maybe we go down the route of food allergies. And, you know, if it is a food allergy, usually it's fairly straightforward for, like an allergist to figure out what that may be especially. And when I say food allergy, I mean like an. An actual IgE food allergy. But then there's this whole host of other issues. And so when I started my practice, I think this is helpful for people to know, like, why I care so much, especially about liver detoxification and natural liver detox infomation. And I don't mean like liver detox or liver cleanse in the trendy sense. It's really a beautiful transformative process that our liver does to help support us on so many levels.
Jennifer Fugo (13:57)
But when I graduated from my master's program, I used to do a lot of organic acid testing. And one, I was working with gut clients on their gut-skin axis. So people who had diarrhea, constipation, belching, bloating, all that stuff. And one thing that I noticed was oftentimes that benzoic acid or benzoates were elevated. And we could attribute that to dietary benzoates. But the reality was most of my clients weren't eating processed foods where you would find those. And then sometimes equally, hipuric acid or hippurate was also elevated. And so I started to dive into this part because I found it to be a really odd pattern that tended to get overlooked in the whole process. And so I started to realize that with GUT clients and cases, that there was this significant problem happening with phase two liver detox.
Jennifer Fugo (14:52)
And so as I started to get more and more chronic skin issue clients, as I shared my story and we started the podcast and whatnot, I began to see that it was of even greater importance to those individuals. Because the liver detoxification capacity in phase two is highly nutrient-driven. It's not like you can cast your oil pack your way out of it. You can't even really take sufficient herbs to really increase the level of nutrients required to run phase two pathways sufficiently if they're highly depleted already, which a lot of times they are. Because people have had these issues for a really long time. And they have other confounding factors like they have chronic gut microbiome imbalances that also chip away and overwhelm that system and affect the gut-skin axis.
Jennifer Fugo (15:47)
Because the benzoates are produced, they can be produced within the GI tract and then have to go to the liver in order to be processed. And so as the supplies get lower and lower for this system to run, your body is becoming increasingly reactive. So people will find that they'll begin to react to salicylates, which is a type of chemical found in various plants and such. And it's something that shouldn't be a problem. But as, especially for example, as glycine, specifically the amino acid glycine, becomes depleted, we become increasingly sensitive to salicylates. And so this is something that you'll see in eczema, for example, with psoriasis, you'll start to see a really significant increase in fatty deposits within the liver that things kind of get gummed up, they don't run as well.
Jennifer Fugo (16:40)
That's why it's unfortunately a comorbidity within psoriasis that we start to see increases in liver fibrosis and other liver issues. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which I know is being turned into metabolic-associated fatty liver disease, I believe name that.
Jill Carnahan (16:58)
We have to learn the same thing, right?
Jennifer Fugo (17:00)
Exactly. And so what really hasn't been focused on in a lot of these conditions and in thinking about how to reduce fatty liver is that beautiful interplay between what's going on in the gut, what's happening to the liver as a result, and the need for nutrients that may or may not be coming in at a sufficient level to at least help the body have a better fighting chance at dealing with the problem. Because if you just dive into a lot of these, like gut protocols, right? Say you. You do a stool test, you find out you have, you know, a bunch of bacteria and unfriendly fungus and all this stuff hanging out in different spots throughout the GI tract as you start to deal with it. It's not uncommon for individuals who have skin issues to start to see a flare up, and it's because their liver can't bear the brunt of what's happening.
Jennifer Fugo (17:52)
I think that's part of it. The other part is sometimes we're just trying to push things too fast for what our body's capacity to heal is at that particular time. And so I think there is this beautiful dance in honoring these really, truly important pathways that help us ultimately manage how reactive the skin becomes. We also find, and I don't know if you've seen this with more like, I call it histamine overload type cases, so chronic hives or urticaria dermatographia, that also when you really nutritionally support the liver (natural liver detox), and that's before you start in, like, trying to deal with the gut and whatnot, that also can reduce reactivity. And in some instances, it's helped some of our clients actually reduce the need for. For like multiple doses of antihistamines a day. I'm not saying you have to stop.
Jennifer Fugo (18:47)
You get to stop entirely, but they tend to go, oh, actually, I know I. The doctor said I could take this antihistamine up to three times a day, but actually I kind of only need it twice. And I noticed I'm less reactive to things, which I really like to hear. So I feel like it helps people get going in the right direction.
Jill Carnahan (19:05)
What a great overview. And what I love, Jen, is that you're going to the liver. And what we know is when the gut has some permeability, which I think with every skin condition, there's some degree of permeability, whether it's excess microbes or yeast or even histamine can all create that. And then what happens is the dumping of the contents of our gut into the bloodstream, which goes directly to the liver, which is like you said and framed so well, our filter organ. And what we know at the root of even diabetes and heart disease and mood disorders and of course skin disorders is this endotoxemia, which means toxic load from within. So I really love that you frame it is to be like, what creams and potions can we put on you? And I know that doesn't work. That's the outside in approach.
Jill Carnahan (19:46)
But at the core, I think what you're describing is we're getting toxic endotoxic means from inside out. And that endotoxemia has a limit of what the liver can process each day. And one thing I've often said is we mobilize the toxins out of our blood. Liver, kidneys, all the organ are detoxing, but if we can't excrete them, we get stuck, and then that liver gets overloaded. And it sounds like that's exactly what you found to be the root of most of the skin things that you advise clients on.
Jennifer Fugo (20:11)
Yeah. And. And you want to look in different places because some individuals do have a, like I was saying, combination of things. So it's usually some sort of phase two liver detox overload. I mean, and granted, there could be nuances here where somebody has a genetic SNP or something like that going on, but we'll just say, generally speaking, phase two live detox overload. There's usually some type of gut dysfunction and issues with the gut-skin axis. So perhaps we're not breaking food down or absorbing it appropriately. There could be issues with, as you were saying, eliminating things. Right. So being constipated can absolutely increase skin reactivity. It can make you more itchy, it can make you feel worse, and your skin flares up much more easily. We also then want to dive into things like thyroid imbalances, if that's. That's present, because there are.
Jennifer Fugo (21:03)
I mean, especially with psoriasis, and I would say with urticaria, there are some really interesting overlaps with thyroid imbalances and thyroid issues like Hashimoto's. We also want to look at what's going on in the gut microbiome. Do we have any foods that we are reactive to? I'm. I think that where I sort of depart. And obviously we can talk more about the diet thing, but I do think that we have focused a bit too much on assigning blame to every single food that's been become deemed inflammatory by, I would say, just like the functional integrative space. And so I think we want to be cautious where we. I think the primary focus needs to be allergies, because obviously allergies, IgE. Allergies should be removed. If you truly have something that you're allergic to, you should not be eating it.
Jennifer Fugo (22:04)
And you might also need to avoid it in products that you put on your skin. But there are environmental factors as well. I mean, you talk a ton about mold. Right. Mold can certainly be a factor. So can pollen allergies, chemicals in your environment. So can we have various chemicals that are in the air, like diisocyanates, that we know tend to be increased in areas where we see higher rates of eczema. There was actually a really great paper that was published a year ago, I believe it was in January of 2023, with a group that Dr. Ian Myles was associated with that talked about this chemical that is in. We're kind of inundated with unfortunately. And they connected these really interesting dots between the incidence of eczema and the higher rates of this chemical existing in that environment.
Jennifer Fugo (23:01)
And there's just so many other factors. I just. I think where I get a little nervous is our reliance on blaming it all on food and saying the only way is to diet your way out of these conditions. Because unfortunately, I'm the person that sees the folks that have taken almost everything out and they've done multiple elimination diets overlapped, and now at that point, they are so neutral, nutritionally depleted. They hate food. They hate the act of eating, which is so. That breaks my heart, like, it really, truly does. As someone who has like an Italian background and I love food. I think food gives us joy, it gives us nourishment. It's connection. When you start to hate that, maybe we need to start asking what's going on?
Jennifer Fugo (23:48)
What are we doing with these tools that are elimination diets and how can we potentially be smarter about them? But there's so many other factors. And obviously with skin issues, there is a skin microbiome. And so it's not just what happens internally. If you have an infection on the skin or an imbalance of what's happening on the skin. And that could look like bacterial or fungal. You can even have parasite. A parasitic overgrowth such as Demodex mites, which are a commensal but can overgrow in certain cases that there's no amount of like doing gut protocols that's going to necessarily fit fix that. So we just have to be aware of so many different facets with skin issues. I think like it. This has been a huge educational journey since I started working specifically with these clients since 2017 of like, how many different things we need to be aware of.
Jill Carnahan (24:38)
Wow, what a great overview. Some of the summary points I want to mention is, first of all, I love that you're coming back toxic load because at the core of that overload of liver, we know it does present in the skin. And I love that you start there versus like, let's apply a cream, right? And you and I agree on that. I Love how you're talking about elimination diets. I could not agree more. In my first years of practice, were taught, let's try these things. And sometimes it works temporarily. But what it is it's not a cause. It's more of a symptom of a permeable gut. Right. I always say you have Swiss cheese for guts. And so if you eat corn or soy or even gluten, you're going to those antigens will pass through the liver's like what the bloodstream first.
Jill Carnahan (25:16)
Immune system's like, what the heck exists? It starts to create a reaction, we start to measure those. Really, the more food igg sensitivities you have is just a symptom of a deeper problem, which is gut permeability, maybe dysbiosis, maybe toxic exposure, maybe mold. So I could not agree more. And while I do find there's a time and place for those elimination diets, even my own history with the skin issues and Crohn's disease and celiac and all those things that had severe permeability, I for years was on very restricted diets. And what I've realized is that is not. You have to go to the core and maybe temporarily limit. But what my goal for patients and myself is continue to add back these nutrients because of nutrition. So thanks for saying that.
Jill Carnahan (25:56)
Because a lot of people are still in the old mindset of, oh, just eliminate all these things. And people come in and they're eating four foods, right? And you've seen that just like I have, and that's not nutritionally adequate. It just doesn't work long term or even say fodmap, say you have SIBO, you go on a low fodmap, which is well studied, evidence based. But guess what, you're starving the microbiome. So long term, elimination of the foods that feed the microbiome is not a good idea. Now, short term, yes, long term, no.
Jennifer Fugo (26:22)
Well, I also would add to that is that – so I was associated with a study that was done a couple of years ago and I worked with a research team out of UC Davis and we surveyed over 600 people who have chronic skin conditions and we asked them about the use of elimination diets to help their skin and what happened to them when they use these diets specifically with their relationship with food. And I think that is equally troubling because. So I'll just give you a couple of stats here. So we even ask people in the age group bracket, like, did an elimination diet trigger a negative association with Food. If you're in the 18 to 24 year old bracket, which, you know, very highly impressionable. I remember that age.
Jennifer Fugo (27:15)
If you told me to like cut all these food, I was in the like, eat fat-free. Yeah, that was, that, was that bracket for me? You have over 80% of these individuals who now have a negative association with food from using an elimination diet to try to address their skin issues. That is deeply troubling because what are, you know, we have this tool which is important, but it's how we use the tool that is also important. And what we don't want to happen is that we say, oh, well, if you do this, you can save your skin, you can fix it all. But yeah, you've got to like blow up your relationship with food. And I don't think that's a fair trade off because the disordered eating patterns last with you for a really long time.
Jennifer Fugo (28:04)
And in fact, by the time in these age brackets you even get to the 55 to 64 year old bracket, it's still close to 50% of people who now have a negative association with food. And we also looked at people who shared with us whether they had a history of eating disorders, so anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, or no eating disorder history at all, and eat. So those, especially those who had a history of eating disorders did find that this was triggering. However, even having no history of an eating disorder, you were still about 50% of people developing this negative association. So again, it's not to say that they're bad to use. It's not to say that there isn't a time and place, because there certainly is. I think as clinicians, as practitioners, we have to consider, right.
Jennifer Fugo (28:59)
If we're going to talk about the whole body, the whole self, we have to factor in how this is going to impact someone. Especially if, you know, I've had clients where they may have seen a doctor, the doctor said, do low histamine didn't work. So they said, okay, let's take out all these foods. Okay, now let's take out these. And the diet gets smaller and smaller with no regard for how that person mentally and emotionally is handling this. This.
Jill Carnahan (29:28)
Oh yeah.
Jennifer Fugo (29:29)
So I think it's important.
Jill Carnahan (29:30)
Reminder. Low oxalates, low salicylates, no Gl. Like, you name it. And there's like, there's four foods left. And then they're like, what do I do? And it's traumatic. And like you said, I think what I've seen is there often is a short time or place when the cytokines are overwhelming. I mean we can go to that point where it does help to decrease the load, but doing it with the right mindset and also just talking through with them like maybe this is temporary or like I often do have gluten out of patients diets because that's a whole nother ball game, right?
Jennifer Fugo (29:59)
Yep.
Jill Carnahan (30:00)
But I totally agree with you 100% because it really is more of a symptom, not a cause of the underlying issue. So thanks for going there. Let's shift just briefly. Biological and JAK inhibitor drugs are commonly used in some of these severe conditions. Yeah, those aren't always the end all because they suppress the immune system. But what can we learn from how drugs are used for these chronic inflammatory conditions that you particularly see in your practice?
Jennifer Fugo (30:26)
So I find it fascinating that I know that many of us are very like, we're very skeptical of big Pharma and medications. Right. And, there are pros and cons to every single thing. But I find the fact that we have the research now that's been done to at least get the FDA clearances for these medications really fascinating because we didn't know a lot of the information under that was going on under the surface specifically with certain cytokines. And so I want to first say that I don't think we should think of cytokines or these inflammatory messengers as inherently bad because to be fair, your body uses them to try to communicate between systems. So it's essentially trying to help in some regards to recruit help into certain areas, do different things.
Jennifer Fugo (31:20)
So, so yes, too much of a certain cytokine could be problematic and also blocking certain cytokines has consequences that can be problematic. But I do think that again this is the nuanced conversation that cytokines themselves, which are produced in our bodies, knowing which ones can be elevated, I personally think has changed how I approach skin issues. I'll give you an example. So I personally think after looking at the amount of cytokines that are produced in say eczema or psoriasis or rosacea, and the incidence of certain, let's just say gut organisms that show up either high or are lurking under the surface, that something like H. Pylori, which oftentimes I found most. So like I presented at a naturopathic conference about this and they're like, no, if you don't have any symptoms of H. Pylori.
Jennifer Fugo (32:18)
I would never deal with it if it's High on a stool test. Like, I would never do it because, you know, it's fine, it's not doing anything. And I said, but when we look at the cytokines specifically that H. Pylori increases, and we know that in these particular conditions these cytokines are elevated. Does it. Why do we have to necessarily go off of symptoms in order to justify potentially working in that area? I have had, and I, I'm sure you've seen the same. I have had clients who have massive amounts of overgrowth H. Pylori and tons of parasites and they have no gut symptoms. Like, I don't understand that in practicality because, like, I had a lot of gut problems growing up. And so like, that doesn't quite make sense to me on the practical level.
Jennifer Fugo (33:10)
And yet when we addressed what showed up clinically based off of blood labs, stool testing and their case history, they got better. So I don't know. And look, I'm. Listen, I'm not a doctor, so I, I'm not saying that I'm smarter than anyone else, but it does not make sense to me that we simply say the test is 100% right. We go by that. My dad was a surgeon, he told me sometimes testing is not always the end all be all. We can't always go off of that to determine what's going on. And somebody who really looks kind of like, I mean, not the attitude of Dr. House, but that show “House” where Dr. House would dig into the case and try to figure out what was going on. That didn't always make sense and wasn't always clear. Yeah.
Jennifer Fugo (34:03)
Can be a really powerful way to help someone uncover and deal with underlying inflammatory triggers that are driving the levels high. And so does dealing with H. Pylori all the time make somebody's rashes go away? No. I have had some clients where it makes a huge improvement in others, they've got so much else going on, it's like a piece of the puzzle. But I do think that when you look at certain things like that and we look at like, for example, with psoriasis, we tend to see elevations of IL-17 or Interleukin 17, Interleukin 23 as well. And so if you start to look at the literature and what do these IL-17 blockers, for example, do they block this, the IL-17 which is actually there to help control fungal overgrowth?
Jill Carnahan (34:57)
Yes.
Jennifer Fugo (34:58)
And I, and if this is news to you, for anyone listening, there tends to be a lot of fungal problems. It's not the whole thing. But there's a lot of fungal problems underlying psoriasis.
Jill Carnahan (35:09)
I think that's the elephant in the room. Let's just say I know again, because if I look back at my history, Crohn's celiac and eczema, maybe 60 to 80% of it was fungal issues. And I want to say that clearly because many doctors, even a functional doctors, are not looking at that. They look at SIBO and they're ignoring SIFO.
Jennifer Fugo (35:28)
Exactly. And the other part is that they, I think one of the biggest, and I don't know where I learned this from, but that we really, obviously we can't really test for SIFO. So you have to look at the case. You have to consider all the factors. I've also found that sometimes, like with eczema, sometimes rashes in certain areas tend to. And it doesn't mean you have excess candida or Malassezia or some sort of fungal overgrowth on the skin, but for some reason, the inflammation will show up in certain areas as skin inflammation, like the inner elbow, on, in the armpits, behind the knees, the feet, the areas where we tend to sweat more sometimes that can correlate with an underlying fungal issue. And so I just, I find it fascinating. So, so I really.
Jennifer Fugo (36:17)
Number one, I want to just say, I think, and I think we're on the same page about this because not everyone can go the distance to get fully healed in entirely doing it the natural way. And so I'm. I don't want anyone to think that, like I'm saying, these medications like JAK inhibitors, which do carry, by the way, a black box warning, and biologic drugs, I mean, they do like, you should always look at the information that's provided to you online, talk with your doctor, talk with your pharmacist, ask a lot of questions, go in with your eyes wide open. But sometimes we need help because the level of suffering is so great that you're not getting that time back. You know, life is so finite, it's so precious.
Jennifer Fugo (37:06)
And to suffer for years when you could have been at your kid's soccer game, right? But you couldn't do it because your skin was so bad or any number of other. Like be at your mother or father's 85th birthday party, you couldn't make it because of XYZ was like all flared up. I sometimes think, how can we find a way to do the path that makes the most sense for the individual so that they get to have some semblance of a life that they're comfortable with while they do that underlying work on skin inflammation. And it is important for people to hear that you can do the underlying work while you're on those medications. And it is possible to wean off of them as well without flaring up as long as you really dealt with those underlying factors.
Jennifer Fugo (37:54)
So I just, I want people to know that because a lot of times they think it's this either or conversation. But if you have like psoriasis and you start developing psoriatic arthritis, the doctors that I've interviewed who work with that condition and they're more in the integrative space have said as the damage is done to those joints, you're not, there is no recovering from that unfortunately at this point in time. So that sometimes is, for example, will warrant the use of a biologic drug to bring those cytokines down, continue to do the underlying work and then eventually being able to get hopefully off of the drug because we just want to save the joints. So I just want people to know.
Jill Carnahan (38:39)
That you're not a failure, not agree more. I think this is very important because like I deal with autochromes and cholesterol. It's a very similar field where biologicals help. And I would say 50% or more patients either come to me and are so desperate they need biological drugs because what I can do is going to take more time than they can. They don't need to suffer or they already come in and they're like, oh, is it too late? The answer is no. It absolutely controls and for me it actually buys time because the root cause medicine often takes 6 months, 12 months, maybe even longer. And I totally agree. And each individual circumstance is appropriate to look at. And I'll even actually test TNF-alpha and cytokine so that I know is this appropriate drug because I want to know is that cytokine high?
Jill Carnahan (39:19)
So I'm actually going to those levels and saying, do you have the cytokine that this drug blocks? Because it will work if that cytokine is elevated and it's perfectly appropriate. So I love that perspective. In our last few minutes. Do you want to give like a little. We've been there so many important things. The liver, the diets, like what's really important, maybe what's not long term important. With elimination the drugs when they're appropriate. What would be like your top tips? If someone's out there saying I have struggled with eczema forever, where do I start? Jen, what would you, what advice would you give them?
Jennifer Fugo (39:53)
The first thing that I would do is definitely support your liver, specifically that phase two detox nutritionally. And so one of the easiest ways you can do that is by adding in supplemental glycine, the amino acid glycine to your diet. I don't find that doing it just through collagen supplements, supplementation to be sufficient enough. I don't know why I found it to be more effective when you actually take the amino acid and you're usually taking somewhere between 3 to 5 grams or 3,000 to 5,000 milligrams like twice a day. So I would definitely consider that as a factor to start with. Also potentially looking at how much vitamin B6 that you're taking because those pathways also need vitamin B6. I can't tell you exactly how much to take because you can take too much.
Jennifer Fugo (40:44)
So I think generally speaking people can stick somewhere around like 10 to 20 milligrams a day. You can look at all your supplements. Sometimes it's in your multi. And that can be like a really easy way to just base the baseline of supporting the liver and helping natural liver detox processes. There's certainly more supports that you can do and I talk about that in the healthy skin show, but that's a good baseline. The second thing that I would consider is educating yourself on what a skin infection looks like because oftentimes people will think that they're just in a flare. That goes for eczema, it even goes for psoriasis and some of these other conditions as well. We think the skin gets really angry and upset and they're just, it's just really flared up.
Jennifer Fugo (41:25)
And so we're trying to use various creams and ointments and all sorts of things when in reality there's an infection present. So educating yourself on what the symptoms are of an infection and if you believe that you have one. Going to the doctor. Yes, you have to go to the doctor and ask for a skin culture with sensitivity testing. So that way they can determine is there something overgrown and then what will kill it essentially. So yeah, there's times where we could say, oh, let's use colloidal silver or hypochlorous acid. But if you have a full blown infection or you have something like Eczema herpeticum, which is this reemergence of the herpes virus that can actually cause you to go blind if it's, it gets, and it will creep, it can creep into the eyes.
Jennifer Fugo (42:13)
So we want to jump on that right away. Those infections are really important. And lastly, I would say definitely looking at gut function. So look at how many times a day you're having a bowel movement, one to three times a day is probably the optimal, I would say, to shoot for. I know we get obsessed with having the perfect poop, but the reality is we just got to start someplace. So figure out using different tools, whether it's digestive enzymes or some sort of probiotic or whatever, to try and help get that regularity back into the flow of things. And the other thing I will say is that looking at your skin care, considering what can be helpful, unfortunately it's trial and error. A lot of times there's no one cream that's going to work for everyone.
Jennifer Fugo (43:01)
But I find that when you can find the right combination to really help support your skin, whether it's with eczema where it's super itchy or you're dealing with psoriasis where you have these really scaly plaques, if you can find something or a combination of things to at least help you manage while you're in the process, that can really be helpful. Skin baths, specifically with sea salt and other minerals can be really soothing. And I would just say in general, last point, nervous system work is really important because a lot of times we develop trauma from what happens to our skin. And so it's really easy to feel a flare coming on, not know what to do, start to panic because you're reliving the past flare up that you had and the mind and nervous system goes on overdrive.
Jennifer Fugo (43:53)
So it worsens every experience that you're having throughout your body. And so whether that's talking with a therapist, doing gratitude work, breath work, whatever you can do to also help support the nervous system and try to remind it as many times as you can a day, even putting post it notes on the mirrors that you are safe, your body loves you, that it's trying its darndest to support you because that's literally what it is trying to do. It's not working against you. That is a really important foundation for this entire journey that you can go on. There's so many things that I could dive into that are like specific to different conditions, which I'm sure we could talk about. But I think these are kind of like a good foundation for everyone.
Jill Carnahan (44:39)
Those are so practical and so applicable. I love it. I especially love the glycine. I found that to be such a key. It's a rate-limiting step in glutathione production. It's core for glyphosate detox. And so many of the things it's just an essential amino acid. And like you said, I actually have people take grams of that, not just as a supplemental collagen. So thank you for sharing that. I'm sorry you went through your own journey, but what a wealth of knowledge. Where can people find you? And I know you have a free resource for our listeners. Do you want to share a little bit about that?
Jennifer Fugo (45:09)
Yeah. So I can be found on the Healthy Skin show podcast as I shared. We have over 350 episodes. You're on the podcast as well. You can actually find the whole show on YouTube on my YouTube channel or if you go to HealthySkinShow.com you'll find every single episode which we have transcripts, links, everything that you could possibly need. And then we also have a guide that I think is really helpful because a lot of times people say, oh my gosh, you've 350 episodes. Like where do I start? What are like the first few episodes? I need to listen to understand how this process that you go through is different from just like the integrative approach. And so we have a guide called the Stop My Rashes Guide.
Jennifer Fugo (45:55)
And I'm sure we can link that up in the show notes that will give you like the first few episodes that are really crucial to build that foundational knowledge. And then you can. We have links for like all of the different special like the various diagnoses and such that you can dive into on that topic. So that's a really great place. And obviously I'm here on YouTube as well and yeah, that those are really the best places to find me.
Jill Carnahan(46:31)
Jen, thank you for sharing your wealth. And like I said, it's always so interesting with guests of what you've been through can kind of drive your passion and purpose and you've clearly done that. And that's what so beautiful is when we transform those experiences to help others. You're out there doing that. So thank you. And skin very personal to me. I so appreciate your work and thanks for coming on today.
