Episode 152: Are your child's skin complaints related to gut health?

If you are a parent of a child who struggles with sensitive skin, eczema, rashes, hives, keratosis pilaris (chicken skin) psoriasis, acne, chronic skin infections such as molluscum, Impetigo, hand, foot, and mouth, cradle cap this episode is going to interest you. Let us dive into the fascinating connection between the gut and the skin. In this episode we will zoom out and look at skin health in general and how the gut is involved with our skin health. 

In this episode, I will share:

• My own story with acne struggles, and how it lead me to study naturopathy;
• The various reasons why the gut is so important for skin conditions, including:
  • Both the gut and the skin are elimination channels for the body;
  • Inflammation from the gut can lead to inflammation of the skin;
• Why the gut and the immune system go hand-in-hand, and how this impact the skin (ie: skin infections, molluscum);
• The nutrients that are important for gut and skin integrity;
• When it comes to hormonal skin conditions such as acne we need to also consider the role of the gut.
• I share more on the specific strains of probiotics that are beneficial for certain skin conditions
  
  

Episode Links:

• Episode 38: Eczema: Causes and Natural Solutions
• Episode 39: The link between eczema and gut health
• Episode 49: Preventing and treating acne in teens
• Episode 71: Treating Molluscum Contagiosum

• Sign up for our FREE Immunity masterclass here.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:54

Welcome to the Natural Super Kids podcast, where you will discover practical strategies to inspire you to boost the health and nutrition of your kids. I'm Jessica Donovan, a qualified naturopath specialising in kids health, and I want to make it as easy as possible for you to raise healthy and happy kids. Let's get into it. Hello, hello, welcome back to the Natural Super Kids podcast, jessica Donovan. Here and today, I'm excited to dive into the fascinating connection between the gut and the skin. So, as you know, if you've been listening to this podcast for any length of time, I love talking about gut health, and we've been talking about gut health over the last couple of weeks and we'll be continuing to talk about gut health over the next couple of weeks. So today I want to dive into the gut skin connection. And so, if you are a parent that has a child that struggles with skin conditions, skin symptoms, sensitive skin, and we're talking about things like eczema, rashes, hives, keratosis polaris, which is also known as chicken skin, where you get the bumpy skin particularly on the back of the arms, but in different areas of the body as well really common in kids keratosis polaris, psoriasis, acne, chronic skin infections, even such as melascom, impotigo, hand, foot and mouth cradle cap. This episode is going to be of interest to you to learn more about how the gut and the health of a child's gut is potentially impacting their skin symptoms and conditions. We have done some dedicated podcast episodes on some of these skin conditions previously so we will link those in the show notes for anyone who is interested. We have covered eczema in episode 38 and 39 of the Natural Super Kids podcast. We talked about acne specifically teenage acne in episode 49 of the Natural Super Kids podcast and we dedicated an episode to melascom in episode 71 of the Natural Super Kids podcast. So you can look at those dedicated podcast episodes if those topics interest you. But today we're going to zoom out and look more at skin health in general and how the gut, as I said, is involved in a lot of these skin conditions. So, as a naturopath, some of you may have heard my back story before, but I actually got into naturopathy. My interest in naturopathy was sparked due to my own skin issues as a teenager. So I had acne and I was 15 when my mum took me to the doctor to see what they could do, because it was really affecting my confidence and my self-esteem and my mental health. It was getting me really down, as I know, is true of a lot of skin almost all of the skin conditions that we talk about at Natural Super Kids and the doctor prescribed the oral contraceptive pill for me Diane 35, which I now know is a pretty dangerous oral contraceptive pill for a young person to be taking, and they are now much more careful about prescribing that particular pill to young females specifically, I mean. But it did the trick. It got rid of my acne, my skin cleared up. It didn't happen overnight, but it did happen within a couple of months and I naively thought that my acne was cured until I came off the pill and realised that was not the case. It came back worse than ever and that sort of started my journey into naturopathy in the first place. I then went to see a naturopath and got some really great results and also a lot of education about what was going on for me personally, and you know I'd had these niggling digestive complaints sort of all my life, as far as I had remembered, and I didn't link the two the gut and the skin. So this topic is close to my heart. I've got personal experience with this, but as naturopaths, when we are treating skin conditions, we're always thinking about the gut, and I want to talk about the reasons, the various reasons why we are thinking about the gut, because you might think, well, the gut and the skin, how can they be linked? And so I want to delve into the reasons. You know the numerous reasons why the gut is so important when it comes to skin symptoms and conditions. So we know now from research that the gut microbiome is known to impact skin health in a number of ways, and there's more and more studies, more and more research being done in this area, which is, you know, really exciting. When we think about the gut and the skin, the thing that they have in common, one of the things they have in common is they are both channels of elimination. So we eliminate through the gut and the digestive system and we also eliminate through the skin. You know, when we sweat, we are releasing toxins and things that we don't need from the body. And if we're not eliminating well through the gut, if our gut or our children's gut is not as healthy as it can be and that elimination channel is compromised, as it is unfortunately in so many children, it places extra pressure on the other organs and systems of elimination, including the skin. So if the gut isn't as healthy as it can be, particularly in terms of that elimination if we are, you know, if our child is experiencing that sort of slower digestion, tendencies towards constipation, not having a bowel movement every day, then you know those toxins can be reabsorbed into the system and our skin is part of that elimination channel, which is not ideal. So if we can optimize elimination through the gut, we can take that pressure off the skin and that alone can really help to improve skin symptoms and conditions. The other reason we're always thinking about the gut when we're talking and thinking about skin health is inflammation. Now, we talk about inflammation so often as naturopaths because it really is a huge inflammation overall has a huge impact on our health and our well-being, and what we need to know here is that a lot of inflammation in children comes from the gut and if our children have an inflammatory skin condition eczema is a perfect example of this, but you know things like acne are inflammatory as well then we need to look at reducing overall inflammation and one of the best ways we can do that is to reduce or look at gut health and reduce inflammation in the gut. Now there's a couple of key reasons why there may be inflammation in the gut. One is dysbiosis. If there's an imbalance in the good and bad bacteria within the gut, which is really common in kids, then that can lead to inflammation. And the other is leaky gut and look, dysbiosis or imbalance in the gut. Microbiome and leaky gut are very much entwined. They kind of go hand in hand together. But if we've got leaky gut, or otherwise known as intestinal permeability, where contents or molecules from the gut before they've been fully, fully broken down so let's say proteins from the foods that we're eating, as an example are leaking through the gut and into the blood stream before they've been fully broken down, then that can set off an inflammatory cascade in the body and can cause a whole range of issues. So if we come back to gut health and we can focus on reducing that inflammation, healing the gut particularly if there's leaky gut and rebalancing the microbiome to a more healthy state, then we're going to be reducing that overall inflammation, which is going to reduce skin inflammation as well. When we're thinking about the gut, we're also often referring to the immune system. Again, the gut and the immune system. They go hand in hand, you know, 80 to 90% of our immunity is located within our gut. So a healthy immune system depends on a healthy gut and healthy gut balance. So if gut health is compromised, if there's imbalances within the gut, that is going to affect the immune system and with kids we often think the immune system. You know, when the immune system is compromised it means that kids are going to get colds and respiratory infections, but we also. It can also leave our kids more vulnerable to skin infections, which are so common in kids, especially those chronic skin infections. So melascom is one of those really common chronic skin conditions in kids. It's viral in nature and, yeah, look, you know, because kids immune systems are still developing, they're going to be more likely to pick up these skin infections from, you know, swimming in public pools or coming in contact with other kids that have skin infections. But if we can have that healthy, robust gut, they're going to be less likely to pick up these skin infections and more likely to be able to fight them off quickly. You know, here at Natural Super Kids we have seen a lot of really nasty cases of melascom that have lasted, you know, months and months and months on end. And although you know, the modern medical approach is often like there's not really much we can do, you just have to let the body fight the infection. We disagree. There's definitely things that we can do to optimize immunity so that the body can fight off that viral skin infection more effectively. And a part of that comes back to optimizing gut health, so that immune health is optimized as well. Look, if your kids, you know, get a one-off skin infection, let's say hand, foot and mouth, which is really contagious, you know most kids get it at some point. My kids actually never got hand, foot and mouth touch wood. I mean, they're teenagers now, so it's much more common in younger kids. I wouldn't necessarily be drastically changing things to improve their gut health, but if these kinds of skin infections are chronic or recurrent in your child, then you definitely want to be, you know, focusing on gut health. So those contagious infectious skin conditions you know are definitely linked to gut health, particularly if they're chronic or recurrent. Now, on the other side of the spectrum, when it comes to the immune system, a lot of the skin conditions that we see commonly in kids are related to a reactive immune system or allergy. And when I say on the other end of the spectrum. I like to sort of view or visualize the immune system as a bit of a seesaw. We've got the defensive side of the immune system that helps keep our kids protected from infections, and then we've got the other side of the immune system which helps to balance and regulate immunity so that our kids aren't reacting to things in their environment or their diet that they shouldn't be. And unfortunately, you know, allergic conditions, allergies, atopic conditions, such as eczema, are definitely on the rise and they are, you know, generally very linked to that reactive immune system. So eczema is a good example of this. And hives Some kids are really prone to breaking out in hives. If that's happening, you know, recurrently, then we definitely want to be looking at that immune system regulation, which comes back to gut health. So we always address the gut when we're addressing a reactive immune system or an allergy or an atopic condition. And again, we are looking at the microbiome diversity. There are certainly specific strains of probiotics that can be really beneficial for helping to regulate that immune system. And we're looking at leaky gut and intestinal permeability to make sure that the health of the gut is robust as possible. So when we're looking at both skin infections and, you know, allergic type skin conditions such as eczema and hives. We want to be coming back to the gut for those reasons. Now, the other thing you know the other link here. As you can see, there are numerous links and hopefully this is painting a picture as to why the gut is so important when we're looking at skin conditions and symptoms. So maintaining gut integrity and skin integrity rely on similar nutrients. So what do I mean by this? When we think about the skin, it provides a physical and a chemical barrier between the outside environment and the inside tissues of the body. You know, it's our external shell, if you like, it's our barrier between the outside world and our inside world. On the same note, the gut has a barrier as well. So the gut lining keeps the contents of the gut separate from the blood and the rest of the body, and that's really important, the integrity of that gut lining, as is the integrity of the skin lining. And when we're seeing these skin conditions that we're talking about in kids, it's often, you know, part of the picture is often that that skin integrity is compromised and often that goes hand in hand with that gut layer integrity being compromised as well. So, as I said, maintaining that gut integrity and that skin integrity rely on similar nutrients. So if a child is lacking in some of these nutrients, then that integrity of the gut and the skin will both be compromised, and some the nutrients that I'm specifically talking about here are vitamin A, vitamin D and zinc. They're really good examples of nutrients that are important for both skin integrity and gut integrity, and so another reason why we're always wanting to look at gut health and that, you know, link between gut and skin is so important. Now, lastly, when it comes to hormonal skin conditions such as acne, we also need to consider the role of the gut. I think anything that I ever talk about on this podcast can you know there can be links with the gut, which is why we talk about the gut so often and why a really good starting point when we're looking at trying to overcome and heal our kids from these kinds of symptoms and conditions. We can come back to gut health, and it has. When we improve the gut and the health of the gut, it has so many positive flow on positive effects to the rest of the body. So, as I said, the hormone balance. So, when we're talking about acne in teens, for example, which is, you know, the most likely age group that is going to struggle with acne. There are a few things that we want to be looking at. So we know that inflammation is a big part of acne. You know, you can see it with acne it's red, it's sore, it's inflamed. And again, when we're thinking about inflammation, we want to be addressing the source of the inflammation, which often comes back to the gut, the dysbiosis, the leaky gut that we talked about before. And then, when we come to hormones, you know, in puberty there is a huge increase in the amount of hormone production in the body as our kids go through puberty, and so the gut becomes really important here, because the gut is so crucial for healthy hormone metabolism and eliminating excess hormones. So this is true for both. You know, for any sort of hormonal transition, whether it's in puberty for our teens, or whether it's through perimenopause for us women that are, you know, in our forties or you know, perimenopause can start anytime, sort of from 35 and onwards and into menopause. So we metabolise a lot of our hormones in our liver. Our liver metabolises a lot of hormones, but then it's our gut's job, our digestive system's job, to eliminate those excess hormones, if the gut isn't working as well as it should, then those hormones can be reabsorbed and cause havoc and, you know, really exacerbate those hormonal symptoms such as acne. So even when hormones are, you know, the main kind of underlying cause of acne, the gut is so still so super important to be looking at optimising to make sure that hormone balance is as healthy as possible. Okay, so now hopefully you've got a really good idea and a much sort of deeper understanding of all the reasons why gut health is important when it comes to skin health, both in our kids and in us as adults as well. And of course there are a whole range of things that we can do to improve and optimize and heal the gut. And we will share a link to our free ebook, our free Kids Gut Health ebook, in the show notes, which walks you through some really practical ways to start to look at improving your kids gut health. And this is really relevant to adults as well. You know I talk about our seed and feed approach specifically, but I do want to get a bit more specific here on this episode because there are specific strains of probiotics which fall into that seed side of improving gut health, because they are the good bacteria strains that have been shown to be beneficial for certain conditions, certain skin conditions and skin health overall. So I just want to talk you through some of those, and you're going to have to excuse my pronunciation on some of these, because pronouncing pronunciation in general isn't my strong point, if I'm honest, and pronouncing the probiotic strains is definitely not my strong point, and I'll fill you in on a little secret here. I often Google how to pronounce and then copy and paste the you know, the bacteria strain or whatever the word I'm needing to pronounce in so I can hear because some of them are really long names, okay. Anyway, now I've let my secret out in terms of how rubbish I am at pronouncing. Now the pressure's on for me to pronounce these, okay. So the first strain that I want to talk about, I can pronounce this one. It's lactobacillus ramnosus LGG. I've seen I've said this one multiple times it's my favorite overall general strain for kids because it has such wide beneficial impacts on a child's microbiome. I do really love using this strain in eczema because it helps to reduce inflammation. It supports intestinal barrier integrity, so reduces and heal reduces that leaky gut and heals the gut. It supports microbiome diversity and it helps to modulate immunity, which is why it's so good to use in those atopic conditions like eczema and like hives. We will pop the names of these strains in the show notes so you can come and have a look at them. But you want to be, you know, looking out for these strains in your probiotic supplements if you're specifically looking at improving skin health through optimizing gut health. The next one is a really good one for acne. It's lactobacillus saliv. See, I told you I knew I'd struggle with this one Salivarius. It is Lactobacillus salivarius LS03. This one is specifically good for acne. As I said, it really helps to reduce redness and inflammation. It also reduces the overgrowth of bacteria associated with acne and improves the skin at microbiome, as well as having a positive effect on the gut microbiome. Again, we will pop the name of that in the show notes if you want to come and have a look at it, because with my pronunciation you probably won't be able to spell it. And then there's another one which is very similar. It's the lactobacillus salivarius. Okay, you're mentors, do that? Yeah, sure, mm-hmm, the same name, but it's got some different letters and numbers on the end. And this is the particular strain that it is. So it's LS01. The acne one was LS03. This one LS01, has some good research behind it on benefiting eczema. So it helps to regulate immunity, because that immune dysregulation or overactive immune system is a key driver of eczema and it's been shown in the research to help reduce eczema symptoms as well. So when you're looking for a probiotic to start to you know, give to your kids supplement to give to your kids to specifically improve their skin, you want to be looking for a supplement that specifically has these strains in them, not just any old probiotic that you can find at the supermarket, the health food shop or the pharmacy. So using the right probiotic for the right use is super important. Now, as I said, you know just using these probiotic strains is not probably going to solve your child's eczema or acne or skin conditions altogether. So you really want to take a more complimentary you know, holistic approach to their skin in general. So make sure you have a look at our free Kids Gut Health ebook the link is in the show notes for you to find out more about the practical things that you can be doing to improve your kids gut health and therefore their skin health as well. I really hope you've enjoyed this episode. I'd love for you to come on over to Instagram, follow us at naturalsuperkids and send us a message and let me know how you found this episode. I'm always open to suggestions on different topics that you'd like me to cover in podcast episodes as well, and I just love to connect and hear from our podcast listeners over on Instagram, so I'd love to hear from you. I'll be back next week. We're going to be talking about the Gut Lung Connection, which is another fascinating topic. I'll talk to you then, thank you.