Sweat It Out for Radiant Skin with Dr. Stacey Shillington ND

Ever wondered why some people boast a perpetually radiant glow? Dr. Stacey Shillington ND reveals the remarkable ways exercise contributes to clear, glowing skin. Embarking on this journey, she explains how physical activity enhances blood flow, fortifies lymphatic circulation, and promotes a natural detox through sweating, which collectively can transform your skin's health. With a deep dive into the biological nitty-gritty, Dr. Shillington unveils just how movement combats bodily stagnancy and delivers the essential nutrients and oxygen that keep our skin in repair mode, supporting collagen production. If you're grappling with persistent acne, you'll be fascinated by the correlation she draws between muscle movement and preventing lymph stagnancy—plus, the unexpected ways in which exercise can help balance our insulin levels.

Imagine an exercise routine that not only sculpts your body but also soothes your nervous system. In this episode, Dr. Shillington shares her tailored blend of yoga, Pilates, and leisurely strolls designed to nurture skin and soul alike. She emphasizes the significance of creating a regimen that aligns with your body's unique needs, enhancing overall well-being while calming inflammation. From workout hygiene tips to the strategic timing of showers, she guides listeners through the little details that make a big difference in skin care. Whether you're just beginning your quest for clear skin or looking to refine your fitness routine, Dr. Shillington's insights offer a holistic approach to health that promises to leave you feeling energized, empowered, and ready to embrace your inner radiance.

Interested in my new Clear Skin Group Program? Click here to learn more!

Click here to watch my FREE Clear Skin Masterclass and learn more about the 4 pillars of clear skin and my top tips to heal acne for good.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Naturopathic Beauty's Clear Skin Sessions, where we heal your acne from the inside out. Hello, beauties, and welcome to the Clear Skin Sessions. I'm Dr Stacey Shillington, naturopathic doctor. For the last 18 years I've been helping women clear their acne, and not just women, but teens and men as well. I've pretty much seen it all, and this podcast is designed to help you on your clear skin journey. I know that there's a ton of information out there. Sometimes it's hard to sift through it all. So I'm here to help you on the journey, to give you some clear direction and advice that's going to help you get clear skin as soon as possible and from the inside out. So there's no band-aid solutions. When I treat acne, I'm always aiming to solve acne for good. I don't want it to come back. Instead, I want to empower you with the knowledge to heal your body fully, so that you have tools to consistently maintain optimal health and maintain beautiful skin All right. So this podcast is part of a series, is part of my foundational series, and because healing the skin is complicated, we need to have some basics in place. So, really, when there's imbalances in the skin whether it's acne, whether it's eczema, psoriasis, rashes, anything the skin is a mirror for what's going on within, so we always have to address inner imbalances in order to get clear, healthy skin. And this series of podcasts focuses on the basics what we have to have in place to start healing the body on a deeper level. So we're starting with the basics, such as hydration, sleep, nutrition, exercise and light. So, if you want to catch up on the previous episodes, I've already posted podcasts about hydration, sleep and nutrition, and my one on light is coming soon, so you can go back and listen to those previous podcasts.

Speaker 1: 2:03

But today we're talking about exercise and movement for clear skin. And I don't know about you, but exercise is a very important part of my life. I've always had to move my body. I've never felt great when my body's been sedentary. I've always felt so much better when it engages in regular exercise. I've been a huge fan of yoga. That's been my main exercise throughout my life. I think I started yoga in 1995 and I've done yoga on a daily basis ever since in some form. So you know I love exercise, I love movement, and it is such an essential part of healing our skin and establishing a foundation for optimal health.

Speaker 1: 2:49

So let's talk about why exercise is so important for clear skin, and I want you to think about water. We're going to use water as an analogy because, after all, our bodies are 78% water. So when we exercise, we're moving our bodies, we're moving water through our bodies. I'm going to talk about that in a little more detail in a moment. But when we don't move, that water in our body stays stagnant, it's not moving, it's like a swamp, and indeed our bodies get kind of swampy when we don't move our bodies enough.

Speaker 1: 3:22

And that's why exercise is so important, not only for the health of our entire body, but for the health of our skin, and when it comes to our skin specifically, there's a few things that exercise does that can really help us attain clear skin. Number one it increases blood flow throughout our body. It increases lymph flow as well. It also induces sweating, it reduces stress and it balances insulin levels, and all five of these benefits of exercise are incredibly important for clear skin and for optimal health. So when we are increasing blood flow through our body, what happens is this blood carries oxygen and nutrients to the skin. If we're not exercising, if we're sedentary, of course, we're still going to have blood flowing through our body, because that's the function of the heart to act as a pump, but it's not going to be flowing as optimally, it's not going to be as efficient. When we start to exercise, we really start to increase the blood flow through our body. We're increasing the amount of nutrients that arrive at our skin, we're increasing the amount of oxygen that arrives at our skin, and this makes an incredible difference in how the skin looks. And when we do this, we're also removing waste products from the area and we're also boosting collagen and skin repair. So the other thing that we're doing is we're increasing lymph flow through our body when we exercise.

Speaker 1: 4:52

And when you think of the lymphatic system, it's very similar to the circulatory system. There's lymphatic vessels throughout our entire body, but the difference is the circulatory system has the heart and the heart acts as a pump to really move the blood through the body, whereas the lymph system does not have a pump. Instead, the lymph system actually relies on the movement of muscles to move lymph through the body. So when we don't exercise, it's very, very likely that our lymphatic system is going to become stagnant. The lymphatic system is key for our immunity, so this system helps bring immune cells to the skin for repair, and this is important because when you're prone to acne, the body needs to repair the blemishes, and when the lymph is not working properly, we're not able to fully heal acne blemishes. And often, when you have blemishes that come up in the same place over and over again, this can be due to stagnant lymph, and exercise is one of the main ways that we really increase lymphatic flow. And when we increase lymphatic flow, it's also going to reduce toxicity and stagnation.

Speaker 1: 6:07

And again, when we have acne, it can be very much be a lymphatic condition, and exercise is one of the main ways to increase the lymph. The other thing that exercise really helps with it increases sweating, and sweating is incredibly important because sweat actually exits the body through the same pores in which acne forms. So sweat can be a great cleanser. It can cleanse and detoxify the pores of the skin. That's why it's so important to sweat. That's one of the reasons that I really love saunas, because it induces sweating and it helps detoxify the skin cells. It helps detoxify the pores.

Speaker 1: 6:49

We're going to talk about sweating a little bit more in a minute, because if we don't handle sweating properly, it can actually contribute to more acne breakouts. And then the other thing that exercise is so important for is reduces stress, and there's a lot of research that now it's really not debatable. When we have a regular exercise regime, our stress levels go down, and stress is such a big part of the healing journey when it comes to healing acne, so many of my patients. If they can really learn how to manage stress properly, if they can transition out of their sympathetic nervous systems, healing just happens so much easier. And then, of course, exercise has also been shown to balance insulin levels, and insulin dysregulation is one of the root causes of acne. It's one of the things that we really have to focus on to clear the skin. So there's a big question and this is a really legitimate question and I want to address this and this is can exercise make acne worse? And this is an emphatic yes.

Speaker 1: 7:56

If exercise is done incorrectly, it can actually worsen acne. We've just discussed all the benefits that exercise can have on acne, but when we over-exercise, when we do too much intense exercise, this can actually spike stress hormones, and this is especially seen in intense endurance exercise and even HIIT, which is high intensity interval training. When we're doing these really intense types of exercise, they have been shown to increase cortisol levels and the thing is, many acne patients already experienced dysregulated cortisol. So when we add intense exercise into the mix, it actually makes this cortisol dysregulation worse and this can make acne worse. So when you have acne, you have to be very mindful about the type of exercise that you choose and you have to be very mindful about how exercise feels in your body. So many times mindful about how exercise feels in your body so many times we've been conditioned as a culture to really go hard with our exercise. We do intense exercise and I've been there as well, you know doing HIIT training, doing spin classes, doing long distance running, doing types of exercise that really stresses our body more than it heals our body, and this type of exercise can be very beneficial for certain people, but it's not beneficial for everyone. And that's what I really want my patients to understand is that when their nervous systems are stuck in survival, the last thing we need to do is to drive them deeper into survival mode, and that's often what we're doing with these intense types of exercises. So we need to shift the way that we look at exercise when we really want to heal acne.

Speaker 1: 9:48

The other way that exercise can make acne worse is when there's a lot of sweating and it's not dealt with properly. It can worsen acne. However, it is possible to manage sweat properly to avoid breakouts. So let's talk about the best way to exercise if you have acne. So, number one, we are going to pay attention to your nervous system. So if you tend to experience overwhelm, anxiety, if you're a type, a personality, if you tend to have huge to-do lists and your focus is checking off those to-do lists, if you tend to have insomnia, if you tend to have heightened stress, you know many of my patients come to me and this is just the way that they've been wired since they've been children. Their nervous systems are stuck in the sympathetic mode and I see this all the time with acne patients. I think this is part of the acne picture just really being in survival mode.

Speaker 1: 10:49

If this is you, you do not want to overexercise. You do not want to choose the type of exercise that's going to drive your body into more stress. You want to choose activities that do not produce excess cortisol levels and these are gentle exercises. So we have to shift our exercise, to think of exercise as more gentle and more nourishing. And if your goal doing exercise is to lose weight and stay fit. You may find that as you reduce the intensity of your exercise, you're able to reach your goals easier. So it's not necessarily working harder when it comes to exercise, it's working smarter.

Speaker 1: 11:33

So the exercises that I really love to calm the nervous system yoga, pilates and walking and of course it's not limited to those activities. But this is the key thing you want to be sure you do not feel exhausted after exercise. So if you do exercise and then you feel tired, you go home and you are beat. Exercise is not working for you. It's making your nervous system work. Or if, after exercising, you feel jittery or anxious or maybe irritated, your exercise is not working for you. It's overstimulating your nervous system, which is already raw to begin with. You want to feel calm after you exercise. You want your exercise to nourish you, and this is a completely different way of looking at exercise.

Speaker 1: 12:23

But our exercise has to work for our nervous system. That is the best way to get success. We need to exercise. That is not an option. But we need to shift the way and we really want to make exercise enjoyable. The gentler. Shift the way and we really want to make exercise enjoyable. The gentler, the better.

Speaker 1: 12:39

Now, I'm not saying that you don't want to do cardio exercise anymore. I'm not saying that you don't want to strengthen your muscles anymore. That's true. We need that, and research has shown us that we need to strength train. We need to train our cardiovascular systems. But we have to do it in a more gentle way. We have to take days off and we have to nourish our bodies. That's the bottom line.

Speaker 1: 13:01

So I'm going to share my exercise schedule with you. I've been very consistent with my exercise for many, many years, for many decades, in fact. I think for 30 years I've had a daily exercise routine. However, my exercise routine is very gentle and I love it. It makes me feel wonderful, so I continue it. I'm never feeling like I don't want to do my exercise, because my exercise feeds me and nourishes me and I feel so wonderful afterwards.

Speaker 1: 13:30

So my schedule is I alternate between yoga and Pilates for 30 minutes every day, five days a week. So one day I'll do yoga, the next day I'll do Pilates, the next day I'll do yoga, the next day I do Pilates, and only for 30 minutes. Now I tend to follow classes online. That's all it takes me, and I don't tend to do really difficult classes. My classes are gentler. I do this for five days every week and then, usually on the weekends, I'll do a longer yoga session. I also walk for 45 minutes every single day and again on the weekends I'll do a longer hike or in the winter, maybe I'll do some skiing, and then I also stay active throughout the day.

Speaker 1: 14:11

I don't want to be sedentary for more than 45 minutes at a time. So if I'm working at my desk every 45 minutes, I'll get up, I'll go downstairs, I'll throw in a load of laundry, I'll make myself a cup of tea, maybe I'll let the dog out. I just walk, I just move my body. I don't want to sit at my desk for hours and hours at a time without moving, and when I'm going places I'll always take the stairs, I won't take that escalator, the elevator. If it's a choice between walking to the store or driving to the store, I'll always walk to the store. So just moving throughout the day.

Speaker 1: 14:46

And I find that this schedule works brilliantly. I'm in great shape, my muscle mass is excellent, my BMI is excellent, I feel very strong, I have tons of energy and after my exercise I always feel good. So that's the key. I want you to feel good. I want you to really help heal your nervous system. Okay, so let's talk about sweating and how to manage sweating.

Speaker 1: 15:13

So you always want to exercise with a clean face, especially if your exercise is going to produce sweating. So if I'm going for my daily walk in the park, clearly I'm not going to wash my face before that because I'm not going to sweat. But if I'm going to do a Pilates session or a yoga session, I'm going to do that with a clean face. I'm not going to do those sessions with makeup on, and so what I do is I usually exercise first thing in the morning, because here's the caveat we don't want to wash our face too much either, because, as we know, when we cleanse our face, we're stripping oils and we are making our skin more vulnerable. So, especially if your skin is very inflamed, very raw, for the time being, it'd be great to do the exercise in the morning so you don't have to wash your face too many times.

Speaker 1: 16:04

As your body begins to heal, as your skin becomes more resilient, you'll have more flexibility with this. But I find when my patients have very raw, inflamed skin with this but I find when my patients have very raw, inflamed skin best to get up in the morning, do your exercise, then cleanse your face, because you always want to cleanse your face after exercise to remove any sweat. This is very important because if we leave sweat on your face, it's going to mix with the oil, it's going to mix with the dirt, it's going to mix with the bacteria and it's going to make your acne worse. And also, you want to, of course, remove sweaty clothing after working out. And if you experience body acne, always be sure to shower. And again, it depends on the activity that you're doing. If you're doing a gentle walk through the park, you don't have to shower afterwards. But if you are working up a sweat, if you're out in the heat, if you feel that you're sweaty at all, you want to shower after doing that activity.

Speaker 1: 16:58

You're going to become more resilient as your body begins to heal. You're going to be able to withstand sweat more. For instance, I'm able to sweat. Now I'll come in and I'll do a few things before I shower, before I cleanse, and I'm totally fine because my body is balanced, it's healed, I don't have a lot of inflammation in my body. But when I first start working with patients, we have to be very careful not to let sweat sit on the skin for too too long.

Speaker 1: 17:25

And, as always, probably the biggest benefit that exercise is going to give you at this point in your clear skin journey, when you're just starting out and there's a lot of inflammation, is exercise is going to relax your nervous system. That's the most important thing. Of course. It's increasing blood flow, it's increasing lymphatic flow. It's helping you sweat. It's also helping balance your insulin levels, but the thing we want it to achieve the most at this point in time is to relax your nervous system. You want to use exercise as a form of healing. You want to choose exercises that make you feel safe, feminine, rested. You do not want your exercise to exacerbate your nervous system and continue to drive it into fight or flight. When you're in fight or flight, you're in survival. This is not a time for nourishing and healing the body, and over exercising is going to drive you further into your survival Nervous system is going to make your acne worse. Instead, we need to find exercise that will help you be in your rest and digest nervous system. So this is actually really fun to do. It's really fun and enjoyable to start to find exercise that feels good and that relaxes your nervous system.

Speaker 1: 18:44

For me, yoga is the best. I love it. Many of my patients really like Pilates. They also like doing calisthenics. They like hiking in nature, you know. They like swimming. Gentle swimming can be really fun too. Cycling, you know I'm not talking about intense spin classes, but going out and riding your bike and enjoying nature. And I think that's one of the things about exercising that so many of my patients enjoy and that's exercising outside in nature, because being in nature has its very own healing benefits on the nervous system and they're very important. So if you can combine your workouts with being outside, that's even better. And I do that in winter. I go outside every single day in the winter and I'm up in Canada Even if it's really cold out in the winter, and I'm up in Canada even if it's really cold out. I make it my mission to get outside and walk in the park with my big Canada goose on and a lot of hats and mitts and everything, because nature just helps heal the nervous system. It's really, really important. So hopefully that's helped. Hopefully that's given you a little bit of insight on how you need to manage exercise when you are prone to acne.

Speaker 1: 19:56

If you want more clear skin tips, be sure to watch my free clear skin masterclass. In this masterclass, I share my four pillars of clear skin with you. If you're suffering from acne, you need to watch this masterclass. Go into my show notes the link's right there. If you're ready to just start your clear skin journey right away, check out my new hormonal acne healing program. I've just launched it. It has all the information you need to clear your skin. It's jam-packed and it is such a great value Less than $500. It includes weekly group coaching for six months. It includes my step-by-step strategy on how to heal your skin. You are not going to get a better value out there. To really help you on your clear skin journey the links are all in my show notes and really find exercise that you love, that you enjoy. Get outside, feel wonderful, feel rested, feel nourished and healed by the movement that you do with your body. So have a wonderful, wonderful day. I will see you in the next podcast and sending you tons of love.