Naturopathic Beauty's Clear Skin Sessions
Clear skin and aging beautifully conversations, trainings and challenges by Dr. Stacey Shillington ND.
Naturopathic Beauty's Clear Skin Sessions
Light Therapy: Unlocking the Secret to Glowing Skin and Vibrant Health
Discover the sunshine secret to radiant skin! We're peeling back the layers of misconception that shroud the sun's role in our skin's health. Battling acne can feel like a never-ending war, but what if the key to victory isn't just in creams and treatments, but also in the golden rays of daylight? Join me as I open up about my own skirmishes with skin woes and unveil how measured doses of sunlight are actually allies in the quest for a clear complexion. It's not just about beauty; we'll explore the profound effects of light on our sleep patterns, circadian rhythms, and even our moods—elements that are all critical players in the theater of skin health.
Then, gear up for some actionable intel on making the most of the light spectrum for your well-being. Think of it as choreographing your very own light symphony, with the morning sun as the opening act to jumpstart your day and the soft glow of the evening as the finale that ushers in restorative slumber. From tech tips like the D-Minder app for tracking vitamin D3 sulfate to lifestyle swaps like donning blue light-blocking glasses, I'm handing you the strategies to not just fight acne but to embrace a life filled with vitality. Plus, there's a teaser on the horizon about the potential of red and infrared light therapy for skin health—stay tuned for that illuminating session.
Check out my new FREE Training: Clear Skin Mastery, where I share the different types of acne and how to treat each one. Click here to watch it now.
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Welcome to Naturopathic Beauty's Clear Skin Sessions, where we heal your acne from the inside out. Hello, beauties, I'm Dr Stacey Shillington, naturopathic Doctor, and I'm so excited to have you here with me. This podcast is designed to help you on your clear skin journey. I know how overwhelming it is out there and, more than that, I know how deeply acne is affecting you. I've been there myself. I've helped thousands of people in their clear skin journey. I truly get it. I truly understand the root causes of acne and, most importantly, I understand what you need to do to clear your skin, and that's what this podcast is all about. So right now, I am doing a series of foundational things that need to be in place in order for you to truly get clear skin, and I'm really loving this series because these aren't things that, directly you know, create clear skin, but they have to be in place in order to get really good results.
Speaker 1:So in the previous episodes, I've talked about hydration. I've talked about sleep, nutrition and exercise. In this episode, I'm talking about light, and this is a really big one. I mean, for decades, we have been told to avoid the sunlight at all costs, and we now have a plethora of research that's actually telling us the opposite. We really need exposure to light, but it needs to be managed properly. So I'm going to share how to do that with you on this podcast, and this is going to help you on your clear skin journey, I promise you, because it is foundational and when I say foundational I mean it is necessary in order to cultivate optimal health, and we are not going to get clear skin until we really work on these foundations. So let's get going, let's talk about how to use light for clear skin, and this is something that I'm especially passionate about because I'm 50 years old, so I really grew up in a time where we were encouraged to avoid sunlight at all costs. There was actually a fear attached to sunlight that getting too much sun was going to cause skin cancer, and, by all means, there's definitely a risk. When sun is consumed recklessly, especially when you haven't been exposed to it for a while, there's absolutely a chance that it can cause cancer and it can cause disease. But if we consume sunlight in a really responsible, educated way, it is going to help us really amplify our health, and so I avoided sun for many, many years.
Speaker 1:If you saw me in the summer, especially when my kids were little, I was dressed head to toe in black and I would wear this massive black hat with this huge brim and these huge black sunglasses everywhere I went. I looked a little. I looked very gothic in the summer and it was a look. It was definitely a look. My neighbors would sometimes make comments about it, but I thought that I was doing the right thing for my health by avoiding sun at all costs thing for my health by avoiding sun at all costs. And then one day I started to read research. I started to climb out of this fear of the sun and what happened is that I got some severe sun damage because I hadn't been exposed to the sun for so long. My skin broke out in a condition called porokeratosis and it's taken me a long time to get it under control.
Speaker 1:But I've learned a lot more about the sun, how to manage it properly, and that's what I want to share with you, because you know, when you think about the sun, when you think about how, as human beings, we've revered it for thousands and thousands of years, it's really important. We can't avoid the sun in order to prolong our beauty. In fact, we need to incorporate the suns into our lives for optimal beauty and optimal skin health. So when we're exposed to sunlight and when we're exposed to the sun, we are exposed to a wide spectrum of wavelengths 5% of the wavelengths are going to be ultraviolet light, 42% of the wavelengths are going to be visible light and 53% is infrared light, and they all have a place in helping us heal and helping us optimize our health. There's a few reasons why sunlight is really important on our clear skin journey, and probably one of my most favorite ones is that sunlight regulates your sleep and circadian rhythm more than any other factors out there, more than diet, more than exercise, more than any supplements that you can take.
Speaker 1:If you can regulate the way that you expose yourself to the sun, this can have a huge impact on your sleep, your restfulness, your mood and, as we discussed in a previous podcast, sleep is absolutely critical for clear skin. So if you're having difficulty with your sleep, you really need to listen to this episode closely and implement some of the strategies that I'm going to share with you at the end. And it's also a well-established fact that the circadian rhythm affects our metabolism at the genetic, cellular and system levels, and if we don't have enough exposure to sunlight. If our circadian rhythm is dysregulated, we experience impaired glucose tolerance and insulin resistance, and this leads to acne directly. So by regulating our circadian rhythm via sunlight exposure, we are actually helping to regulate the way that our body utilizes insulin, and this is important and this is actually a really, really big deal when it comes to acne.
Speaker 1:The other thing is that sunlight actually changes the brain, and there's a lot of research now that shows that infrared light has been shown to positively affect seasonal and non-seasonal depression. So what happens is sunlight increases serotonin production in the body, and when there's more serotonin, we shift to a more positive mood. There's less stress, less cortisol dysregulation and less acne. And it's also shown that red and near infrared light photons actually penetrate through the skull and into the brain cells and it spurs the mitochondria to produce more ATP, which means we are going to think sharper and more clearly. So, when it comes to brain health, sunlight is so important. We really need this to regulate our mood, especially when we're dealing with acne, and I know so many of my acne patients really suffer from stress.
Speaker 1:This is a really big deal, and exposing yourself to sunlight is critical Great way to mitigate this, and this is a really interesting one. So we need sunlight to make vitamin D3 sulfate. So this is the sulfated form of vitamin D3. Now, when you're taking supplemental vitamin D3, it's not sulfated. Now you still get benefits from regular old vitamin D3. What happens is this D3 travels through the body encapsulated in LDL cholesterol and it delivers calcium to the bones and it has many different benefits. But when D3 in the skin is exposed to sunlight, vitamin D3 sulfate is formed and this form of vitamin D3 has so many more benefits. This is where you get a lot of protection from cancer, this is where your immune system is strengthened, this is where your brain health is increased and this is where you really get a reduction in depression.
Speaker 1:Now, vitamin D3 sulfate can only be produced by the sun. When vitamin D3 is in the skin, it cannot be taken as a supplement. So even though you're taking your vitamin D and you're boosting your levels, you actually need to be exposed to the sun in order to fully activate vitamin D3. So this is a really big reason why we want to be exposed to the sun, because vitamin D3 is such an important vitamin and it's such an important hormone in our body. It affects so many different parts of our health and, of course, in order to have balanced hormones, we're going to need adequate vitamin D3 sulfate. So it's important Another great reason to get out into the sun, and when we properly align ourselves with the natural rhythm of the sun and the moon, this is going to reduce our exposure to blue light in the evening.
Speaker 1:And when we remove blue light, we can actually increase melatonin production by up to 75% throughout the body. And melatonin is important because it protects against external skin damage. So for many of us that live in northern climates and we're inside for most of the winter, when we go outside and we're suddenly exposed to all this sunlight, if we have adequate melatonin, this can actually prevent us from some external skin damage. And, of course, melatonin has also been shown to reduce skin cancer and it's essential for sleep as well. So that's another reason why getting out into the sunlight is so important for clear and healthy skin. So basically, overall, the sun is the most effective source of healing light frequencies. It provides the most potent full-spectrum stimulation and we need sunlight to thrive. And when we thrive, our health is optimal, which leads to clear, healthy skin.
Speaker 1:And, of course, skin is a reflection of our overall health. Skin is not an organ that exists on its own. The skin is kind of like the report card. At the end of the day, it tells us how the other systems in our body are functioning. And when we deal with the skin on its own and we don't pay attention to the other organ systems that affect it, we're missing the point of the skin. It's a mirror. It tells us what's going on, and that's why, when you go to heal a skin condition, you have to work with somebody that understands the underlying structures of the body, the underlying physiology of the body, and how everything is connected together.
Speaker 1:So of course, we do have to be cautious about overexposure to the sun and burning our skin, and of course, there is a lot of research that's showing us that when we take in too much sun, we are going to increase our risk of sun cancer. It's definitely not debatable and it's something that we have to be very mindful of when we're considering how we expose ourselves to the sun, because we know we have to expose ourselves to the sun at the same time that we need to protect ourselves from the sun. So the sun can be a very confusing subject for many people. People don't know how to properly deal with the sun, and so I'm going to give you some tips and tricks on how to do this as well as possible, so you can get all the benefits of the sun while protecting yourself at the same time. So how do we manage our sun exposure?
Speaker 1:Number one eat a balanced whole food diet with lots of antioxidants to protect yourself from UV radiation. So one of the reasons why we're so susceptible to sun damage is because many of us are eating poor diets. They're deficient in antioxidants. When we are exposed to UV radiation, our body doesn't have the resources to properly protect us from a nutritional perspective. So eating a whole foods diet, such as my clear skin diet, is one of the most important ways to really protect yourself from the sun. And really focusing on fruits that have a lot of phytonutrients, such as fruits and vegetables that are strongly pigmented, such as blueberries All berries are really good Lycopene, which is found in tomatoes and red vegetables that's something that's also it's been shown in research to be very protective against the sun. So lots of fruits, lots of vegetables, really eating a rainbow of different colors when you're eating your produce.
Speaker 1:Another thing that I've really found helpful over the years is using an app to help you determine how much sunlight you need every single day to produce adequate sulfated vitamin D3. So there is an app, and it's called D-Minder, and this is the one that I use, and it takes into account where you're located on earth. So by determining that, it determines how much sunlight exposure you get and how strong it is, because it also asks you the season that you're in, the month and the day, and then it also tells you how much of your body needs to be exposed for how long, in order for your body to produce the amount of vitamin D that it requires. So this is a really great app.
Speaker 1:For instance, if you're in a bikini in really warm weather, you're going to need to spend less time in the sun than if you're in a parka, with only your face exposed in a very weak sun situation, such as what we experience in Canada for many months during the year. Now, this is something that I usually follow, so I always use a zinc-based sunscreen on my face, always because I do not want to experience sun damage on my face. So I will expose other parts of my body without sunscreen. However, I will never expose my face without sunscreen and, it's true, never expose my face without sunscreen and it's true I'm vain. I'm not going to risk the sunspots and the sun damage on my face. I will, you know. However, my arms and my legs I'm okay, you know, with a few sunspots there. That's not going to bother me. So that's my strategy.
Speaker 1:You know, you may be more comfortable with exposing your skin for a period of time, and the Deminder app is going to let you know how long you should be exposing your skin. Usually it's about 20 minutes a day, no longer than that. After you've reached your required amount of time that the app gives you, or you've reached 20 minutes, you want to put on protective clothing or you want to put sunscreen on. So really, that's the rule of thumb. You can use an app to let you know exactly how much time you should spend in the sun without sunscreen, or usually it's about 20 minutes. Now, if you've been inside all winter long and you're just getting out into the sunshine, you want to be very cautious because your skin is going to be very sensitive, especially depending on your level of pigmentation. For myself, I'm fairly pale, so I have to be really careful with the sun. I might not be able to stay out for the full 20 minutes. At the very beginning of the season it might only be 5 to 10 minutes and then I'll put on sunscreen, but a little bit of unprotected sun is a very, very beneficial thing for all the reasons that we've described.
Speaker 1:The other thing that you want to do is you want to expose yourself to 20 minutes of sunlight in the morning without sunglasses. So this is not really talking about the skin. This is not really talking about vitamin D3 sulfate production really talking about vitamin D3 sulfate production. Instead, this is talking about how much light is actually going to hit your eyes to shut down melatonin production. Because when you wake up in the morning, when you expose yourself to broad spectrum light from the sun, you are shutting down melatonin production, and that is going to give you the energy to carry on with your day. It kind of gives you a boost of energy.
Speaker 1:Conversely, in the evening, we want to produce more melatonin, so we want to reduce our exposure to full broad-spectrum light. Instead, we want to really block out a lot of the blue UV rays that we're exposed to, and we can do this by dimming the lights in our home, using candlelights and wearing glasses that are blue UV ray blocking glasses and they are now all the rage. You can find them many different places and you can actually use the ones with orange or yellow lenses and they block out almost all the blue light. And what happens when we do this is this stimulates the brain to start producing more melatonin and this is going to make you sleepy and this is going to help you get a full night's sleep. And, of course, you also want to limit your device time. Two hours prior to bed, I like just cutting my devices out completely. I find that I get a really good sleep when I do that and I know because I track my sleep. I use an aura ring so I know how much deep sleep, how much REM sleep, how much light sleep I'm getting. And when I block out that blue light for a couple of hours before I go to sleep, my deep sleep numbers dramatically increase. It's really incredible. Okay, so hopefully this has helped.
Speaker 1:I'm just going to give an overview of how you want to manage the sun. Number one download an app called the D-Minder. This is going to tell you how much time you need to be in the sun without sunscreen in order to produce enough vitamin D3 sulfate. Number two when you wake up first thing in the morning, you want to expose your eyes to 20 minutes of sunlight. I mean, don't look directly at the sun. I'm not talking about that. I'm just talking about going outside and looking around, not wearing sunglasses, walking your dog or going to get the mail, or just taking a refreshing walk as early as you can.
Speaker 1:And then, once the sun starts to go down, you want to start really blocking out that blue UV light. So what you want to do is you want to put on your blue blocking glasses, you want to dim the lights. You want to use candlelight. You don't want to use the LED lights. So if you have LED lights in your home, you want to turn those down. You want to really minimize your exposure, because those LED lights have a lot of blue light in them. So does your computer screen, so does your phone screen. You really want to minimize the use.
Speaker 1:And just by making these simple changes you are going to notice a big difference in how your body regulates itself. You're going to be in a better mood. You're going to have more vitamin D3 sulfate, so overall you're going to be healthier. You're going to be able to think sharper and more clearly. Your immune system is going to be stronger. You're going to be protecting your skin more with the elevated melatonin. Your body is going to improve with just these simple measures. It's so simple, it takes no time, it costs absolutely no money at all, and it's one of those things that can make a really big difference in your life.
Speaker 1:So I hope that these little tips have really helped you, and I know a lot of you are going to ask me what about using light devices for your skin? I'm going to do a completely separate podcast on that, because I have a lot to say about it. However, I am going to give you the Kohl's Note version. I love red and infrared light therapy. For skin health, collagen production and to keep the skin clear. I use a mask called the Omnilux. I use it every single night on my face and on my chest. It makes a really big difference.
Speaker 1:But I'm going to go into detail on how to use these devices in another podcast and, as always, our priority is working on relaxing the nervous system. I want you to use light as a form of healing. Allow the sun to make you feel good. The sun that's what it does. It makes us feel happier. I want you to get out, I want you to experience it, I want you to enjoy it. The sunlight's increasing your serotonin production.
Speaker 1:This is going to help heal your nervous system and we need to get you out of that survival mode in your nervous system Because when you're in survival it's not a time for nourishing and healing the body. We need to be in our rest and digest nervous system and this is where you're going to feel really good. And I want you to feel really good because that is going to help you get clear skin almost more than anything else. So hopefully these tips have made sense to you. If you want more clear skin tips, be sure to watch my free clear Skin Masterclass, where I share my four pillars of clear skin. And if you're just ready to jump in right now and start clearing your skin, I've just launched my new hormonal acne healing program. The link is in the show notes. You can learn more about that there. There's also information about working with me one-on-one. It's all in the show notes. So have a really beautiful day. Thanks for tuning in and I'll see you in the next podcast.