Ask your Dr about autoimmune skin problems like eczema and psoriasis and you’ll probably be told to take prescription drugs to manage your symptoms and be given no practical advice about addressing the actual causes of these problems.
However, research is shedding new light on the powerful link between gut health and autoimmune skin conditions.
So if you’re bold enough to think differently and address the causes of autoimmunity, you’ll likely be able to eventually ditch pharmaceuticals and topical creams, and get on with living an extraordinary life.
In this article we’re going to look at:
- How to manage your stress
- How to heal your gut
- Which supplements to take
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Chapter 1: Stress
There are 2 main things to consider when addressing the causes of eczema and psoriasis rather than just the symptoms - these are the amount of stress you are exposed to and your gut health.
We are affected by our physical and emotional stress since the womb.
Everyone who has or is suffering with autoimmune skin problems feels the link between stress and skin symptoms - in fact, up to 80% of people with autoimmune disease reported uncommon emotional stress before disease onset.
But what is stress and can it cause skin problems?
The term “stress” means anything that causes a physical change in your bodies function - stress is anything that moves your body function up or down from normal. Normal function is called homeostasis, or your goldilocks position - not too much, not too little, everything is just right.
The trouble with us humans is that our brains are extra advanced emotionally, and because of this, we are very good at causing our body physical “stress” through our emotions.
Stress can be good - that’s called stimulation or a thrill, like going for a run, weight training, or watching a scary movie), this is called EUSTRESS… but of course stress can be bad - this is called DISTRESS - and distress is anything that causes a negative or degenerative physical consequence.
The problem is, that the exact same event or level of stress can also cause one person to be in EUSTRESS and the other to be in DISTRESS.
Through traumas, high work loads, or just plain old putting your body through hell, you can become more susceptible to distress, just like some people are more susceptible to the hormone insulin, and diabetics, are not.
Think about public speaking - some people are distressed by even the thought of it, and some people are stimulated by that same thought.
Stress presents itself physically as adrenaline and cortisol - these are stress hormones, that have been part of human wiring since before we were human.
They help us obtain quick energy to run away from predators, but when secreted all the time, cortisol and adrenaline slowly melt away muscles, organs, and skin, trigger inflammatory bowel disease flareups and reduce immune function.
Lately, us humans also secrete these stress hormones for all kinds of emotional reasons, like when reading negative comments about your post on social media, being yelled at, when you’re thinking about your taxes or considering how much work you have on tomorrow.
Stress hormones like cortisol also impair your digestion and gut function.
Impaired gut function results in everything from problems with the quality of your gut bacteria, too constipation, diarrhoea, and other irritable bowel symptoms.
Emotional stress makes the negative effects of physical stress more powerful. Physical stress can come from too much exercise, low calorie dieting, poor sleep, and infection.
Physical stress can also come from the environment and technology. Refined seed oils and sugars, plant chemicals, household chemicals, radiation, pharmaceuticals, plastics, and pesticides can all cause physical stress and harm our gut health.
These stressors are assaulting our bodies all the time, mostly without us even realising it.
For example, on average humans consume 1 credit card worth of plastic each week! And chemicals present in plastic have been shown to cause autoimmune disease.
Stress is complex, things like social rank, personality, and your emotional history matter. These all effect how sensitive you are to stress hormones, and emotional and physical stressors.
Imagine you have a fresh graze on one knee. What if I squeezed lemon juice on each knee?
There will be 2 different reactions to the same action.
Healing your body by reducing emotional and physical stress, improving your gut health, and making quality nutrition and lifestyle choices matters greatly to your ability to mitigate autoimmune problems or flare ups if you already have a condition.
So many people’s autoimmune skin problems begin during highly stressful periods in their life.
These heightened emotional states states can lead to a cascade of physical consequences that can heighten your susceptibility to autoimmune problems.
Chapter 2: Gut Health
Your gut houses at least 70% of your immune system.
Autoimmune skin problems occur because the body's immune system attacks its own healthy tissues. Instead of acting like a well trained guard dog, the immune system acts more like a vicious chihuahua, that barks at everything and everyone, but can’t really stop anyone from robbing your house.
But why does your immune system malfunction like this?
That’s likely down to your gut health.
Gut health is influenced by two related variables - the gut microbiome and the gut barrier.
Your gut microbiome is the sum total of all the bacteria in your gut, and you have 150x more bacterial genes inside of you, than human genes. There are also literally pounds of bacteria in your gut, right now, influencing everything from your food choices, to hormones, and your immune system.
The barrier of your gut, is made up of a layer of mucous and underneath it, a thin layer of cells called enterocytes. Together, this barrier regulates how your immune system interacts with gut bacteria and other stressors.
Physical stress from poor diet, food, chemicals or toxins can inflict damage upon this mucosal lining.
If you’re experiencing emotional stress at the same time, or already have damage or impaired gut function, these physical stressors have more powerful damaging consequences to the gut barrier.
If the mucosa is damaged, bacteria, toxins, and plant or human made compounds like lectins (the most famous being gluten) phytates, or oxalates can start to break into the cell layer of the gut and cause inflammation.
Inflammation means that your body has turned on its immune system - the fire brigade has been called - and different immune cells become activated and produce more inflammation causing molecules called cytokines.
Inflammation in the gut can cause dysfunction within the barrier of cells and proteins designed to let good things like vitamins, minerals, proteins, fats and sugars through into your blood supply, and keep out unwanted bacteria and toxins.
The gut barrier can now be breached by bacteria, and toxins, and these can now get into the blood stream, and into other organs including the skin and cause autoimmune disease.
Ultimately, autoimmune disease happens when the body's natural immune defence system can't tell the difference between your own cells and foreign cells, causing the body to mistakenly attack normal cells.
There’s no better place to start improving your autoimmune and your skin, than the gut.
Chapter 3: Protocols to Fix AID
There is no one size fits all approach to improving gut health - or nutrition - but there are some universal considerations.
So far we’ve discussed:
- Emotional Stress
- Physical Stress
- The gut microbiome
- The gut lining
There are many ways to alter your emotional stress, like breath work, time in nature, meditation or seeing a psychologist.
We’re going to dive into the lever that you can pull through supplementation that sets aside conversations about animal based, or plant based, or keto, or calorie counting and just looks at the most evidence based supplements and superfoods to help reduce your exposure to physical stress, improve the gut microbiome, and ultimately heal the gut barrier.
Improving the microbiome and gut barrier by itself will reduce harm caused by physical stressors, and improve your immune function.
Chapter 4: Supplement Protocol
We’ll break the protocol up into 3 parts:
- Raw materials for healing
- Special nutrients
- And microbiome fuel.
By raw materials I mean actual macronutrients that your body can break down into amino acids and then use for healing.
Imagine you have a white wall, with holes in it. Well your going to need paint, sure, and maybe even a painting to hang there…but first, you’re going to need materials to fix the holes in your wall.
At my company My Way Up®, we’ve seen great success amongst our customers when they use what we call pro-gut proteins as baseline raw materials.
The most outstanding proteins for gut repair are collagen, gelatin, bone broth and L-glutamine.
The first 3 are related, in that they have unique concentrations of particular amino acids - which are protein building blocks, especially glycine, proline, and hydroxyproline.
There are multiple studies looking at the benefits of these proteins on gut health, especially for the improvement of gut barrier function, both in the cell wall and the mucosal layer.
Collagen, gelatin or bone broth aren’t plant based, and it’s impossible to get commercially available identical plant-based versions of these proteins - but you can get plant-based glutamine.
Drink bone broth daily, use gelatin in your cooking, and take around 10g of glutamine, and up to 20g of collagen per day.
Special Nutrients
There are 3 evidence based special nutrients that seem to stand out from the rest and those are Zinc Carnosine, and Vitamin A and D.
Zinc carnosine is a bonded compound of a zinc molecule, and a carnosine molecule. And together, this compound has some remarkable effects on healing the gut barrier, and also the skin, and stomach ulcers.
The research on Zinc Carnosine has almost all been done on a trademarked form of it called polaprezinc.
This is why I recommend using this exact form as I’ve heard from multiple sources that cheaper forms of zinc carnosine simply fall apart after manufacture and just don’t work.
Vitamin A and D have particularly powerful anti-autoimmune disease effects - with one large scale vitamin D trial showing a 22% reduction in autoimmune disease incidence with only a 2000iu per day dose.
Other studies have shown how vitamin A improves the actual function of immune cells, and helps your microbiome communicate with your immune system to prevent excessive inflammation and create better co-operation between your gut bacteria and you.
I always recommend people get as much vitamin D from the sun as possible, and at least in the winter, supplement with vitamin D3 and K2 to increase absorption - but when suffering with autoimmune skin problems, you likely want to do both.
There are plant based forms of vitamin D3 and K2 available - but most are not, so research carefully.
Vitamin A is best sourced from cod liver oil, or beef liver - which can be tough to stay consistent with so a quality desiccated beef liver supplement is a great option. The thing about liver is that it comes with a high dose of other vitamins and minerals including copper and vitamin B12 and 6, which are also important in immune system regulation.
There are 2 forms of vitamin A - one called beta carotene, which needs to be converted by your body before it can be used, the other is called retinol, which is already in a form that’s ready to be used. So be sure to opt for retinol vitamin A.
People have had excellent results taking up to 10k iu per day of vitamin D and retinol vitamin A, although bear in mind these doses are greater than the recommended daily intake.
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Microbiome Fuel
By microbiome fuel, I mean food that can be directly used by good bacteria in the gut. And the best foods for your microbiome are fibre and polyphenols.
There’s some controversy around the absolute requirement for fibre and polyphenols, however we’ve talked about the goal of possessing robust health, so that your body can deal with physical and emotional stress better.
Fibre and polyphenols help to proliferate good bacteria, and feed them, which keeps them happy, and prevents them from eating your own mucosal layer instead.
This 2017 research review concluded unequivocally that fibre-deprived gut bacteria eat the gut mucosal barrier for food and increase susceptibility to pathogens.
The trick with fibre is to take it slow.
Using a fibre and polyphenol powder can help you titrate your dose, and make it easy to work your dose up, whilst mitigating any unwanted symptoms like bloating.
The fibres and polyphenols we most often recommend include the polyphenol curcumin (which as it turns out, your gut bacteria loves), quercetin, and specialised fibres like hydrolysed guar gum, acacia gum, and a trademarked fibre called resist aid.
You’ll find a detailed protocol below including exact dosages, the timing of the dose, and more.
Takeaways:
- Reducing your exposure to emotional and physical stress, and improving your gut health by eating a quality diet, and potentially taking key supplements will help reduce your flareups, heal your skin, and reduce your chances of developing other autoimmune conditions.
This certainly isn’t the most detailed list, but it is a balanced, very effective potential supplement stack for most people, whether you’re plant based, animal based, or if you’re just looking to improve your symptoms quickly.
References:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5131798/ low fibre
https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj-2021-066452 Vitamin D
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2768543/ Vitamin A
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1074761318305260 Vitamin A
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28174772/ Collagen
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7688149/ Glutamine
