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
How to Come Off the Birth Control Pill Acne-Free with Dr. Stacey Shillington ND
When my own skin declared war on me after I ditched the pill, the struggle felt insurmountable. Enter Dr. Stacey Shillington ND, whose triumph over severe post-pill acne led her down the path of naturopathic medicine and became a beacon of hope for many. Today, Dr. Stacey joins us to unravel the truth behind birth control's impact on our hormones and skin health. With her expert insight, we tackle the fears surrounding the discontinuation of birth control and the steps to embrace for nurturing clear skin from within. Dr. Stacey's inspiring journey and her three-step method is not just about combating post-pill acne; it's about empowering a holistic healing process that redefines our relationship with our bodies.
But what about the villains lurking in our diet wreaking havoc on our insulin levels? Stacey doesn't shy away from exposing the often-overlooked nexus between insulin, diet, and skin health. She prescribes a serving of wisdom on meal timing, sugar reduction, and detoxification practices that are simple yet revolutionary. Through her expertise, gleaned from 18 years and thousands of success stories, she extends an invitation to her affordable group program, offering a compass to navigate away from conventional acne treatments and toward natural healing. Her passion-filled narrative doesn't just offer solutions; it ignites a transformative movement toward sustainable health, clear skin, and the power of self-care. So, let's join forces with Dr. Shillington to spread the word and turn the tide in the quest for radiant skin and a balanced body.
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, beauty, and welcome to the Clear Skin Sessions. I'm Dr Stacey Shillington, naturopathic doctor. For the past 18 years I've been helping women clear their acne by balancing their bodies from the inside out. This podcast is for you on your clear skin journey. I'm here to share my wisdom and my experience with you so that we can really expedite your clear skin journey and get you to clear skin as soon as possible. This podcast is all about the birth control pill. I know many of you are either on the birth control, maybe scared to come off, or you've come off the birth control pill and you're experiencing post-pill acne and we are going to do a deep dive into that today. And if you enjoy this podcast at all, please leave a review. It helps me get the word out there and help women know that there is an answer to healing their acne and it's incredibly empowering because it's healing our own bodies from the inside out and you are going to get so many more benefits than just clear skin. But I know how traumatic acne can be and clearing your acne is going to just change your life and that's the feedback I get from so many women that work with me. Clearing their acne changes their life, so let's get to it.
Speaker 1:I've been on this clear skin journey. I have experienced crippling acne that changed my personality. That made me go from being really confident and outgoing and having a great time to somebody that just wanted to hide away from the world and curl up in the fetal position and wait for my acne to go away before I rejoin the world. That's how I experienced my acne. It was so traumatic. That's why I became a naturopathic doctor to help women get through their clear skin journeys. But my experience revolved around the pill. It really did so. I had moderate acne when I was a teen, when I was about 19,. My doctor put me on the birth control pill and it solved my acne completely. I barely experienced anything for about 10 years. In my late 20s I decided to go off the birth control pill and that's really when all hell broke loose on my skin. I had never experienced anything like post-pill acne before. My skin was red, inflamed, painful. There was no way I was leaving my house. There was no way I was going to work or going out with friends. It completely changed me. It completely traumatized me and I get it.
Speaker 1:I understand how you are feeling right now dealing with acne, but the good news is is that we can solve your acne and I can help you understand how to manage getting off the birth control pill successfully Now. Even if you've already come off of it, even if, right this moment, you're experiencing post-pill acne, please don't panic. We can absolutely get you to a place where your skin is clear. I've been doing this for a very long time. Nobody has to live with acne forever and I really want you to understand this, because the body is a miraculous thing. The body wants to heal. We just have to give it what it needs to heal. And, most importantly, the body is communicating with you right now. It is telling you that there is an imbalance that needs to be solved and it's important that you do this. And acne is is telling you this, probably as overtly as your body can tell you it, because it's right on your face, you can't miss it. It's being very direct with you. So let's understand what acne is telling you.
Speaker 1:If you're on the birth control pill right this moment and you're scared to come off of it because of post-pill acne, I totally get you. It's real, if I had been more educated, I would have done a couple of things before I came off the birth control pill. I'm going to teach you what these things are and I would have done them for a couple of months before I came off the birth control pill. And that's what I currently do with my patients that are on the birth control pill. We put a protocol in place for a couple of months. Once a lot of their symptoms have cleared, once inflammation in the body has come down, then we go off the birth control pill and sometimes there are a few blemishes here and there, but it's not anything like what I experienced, that really red flaring post-pill acne that's with you for months. And if you've already come off the pill, of course, don't panic. You will get to a place of clear skin if you do the work, I promise you. But we need to just take a few deep breaths and we need to get you to a place where you are not panicking, where you are not feeling upset with your skin. We need to get you out of your sympathetic nervous system, out of survival mode, into your parasympathetic nervous system, where your body is actually going to be able to heal and I'm not going to talk so much about that today. I have other episodes that talk more about stress and acne, but I'm going to to talk so much about that today. I have other episodes that talk more about stress and acne, but I'm going to share my three steps to conquer post-pill acne that are applicable to those on the birth control pill and those that have already come off the birth control pill. So this is my three-step method. I go through this in detail, with all the different supplements, all the diet plans, all the food, all the lifestyle changes in my Clear Skin programs. But I'm going to give you an overall idea of what needs to be done right this moment.
Speaker 1:But first of all, let's talk a little bit about what the birth control pill does to your body. So, number one, it stops natural estrogen and progesterone production in your body and women that have acne. They're often prescribed a pill that contains a progestin called drosperinone, and this will stop androgen production as well. So, basically, estrogen, progesterone and androgens the natural forms of these hormones are no longer being produced in your body. The natural forms of these hormones are no longer being produced in your body. Instead, the pill is feeding you synthetic hormones. Now, these synthetic hormones are not identical to natural hormones. They're just not, so they're going to fit in the receptor sites a little bit differently and there are going to be side effects that come from using the birth control pill.
Speaker 1:And the birth control pill has the ability to affect almost every single system in your body, because these hormones do affect so much more than just our ovaries and our menstrual cycles. These hormones affect almost every system in the body. So when we're taking the birth control pill, our mood is affected, our hair is affected, and this is something that's not talked about a lot. But women that are on the birth control pill experience hair loss and when they come off the pill, they experience even more hair loss. And this happened to me and I didn't really understand it when it happened to me, and my hair has not been the same since. So this is something interesting that we should talk a little bit more about.
Speaker 1:But the pill also affects the thyroid. It affects the breast. It affects the liver, the gallbladder, blood pressure. It has the ability to change weight. Of course, it prevents pregnancy. It increases diabetes risk. It can increase the risk of blood clots, of autoimmune disease. It affects our bone health. It can affect our libidos. It makes us more susceptible to vaginal infections. It creates a lot of nutrient deficiencies. It creates imbalances in the gut, increases our risk of heart attack and cancer. It increases our reaction to stress. Of course, it affects our skin. It can increase migraines, headaches and also the way that we think.
Speaker 1:There are so many ways that the birth control pill affects the body. A couple of the ways that it really affects the skin is that it lowers a lot of nutrients, but it especially lowers zinc levels. And zinc is important because it inhibits bacteria in the sweat glands and that's a place where acne does form in the pores of the skin. And zinc also helps the body use vitamin A. And when we don't have enough zinc, our body's not able to properly utilize vitamin A to keep our skin healthy. And the pill also really dysregulates the microbiome. The microbiome is a community of trillions of microbes in the gut lining and on the skin. When the microbiome in the gut is dysregulated, the microbiome on the skin is going to be dysregulated. And you know that this dysregulation is happening if you experience leaky gut or food sensitivities, if you're more vulnerable to infections, if you're more vulnerable to infections, if you're more vulnerable to autoimmune conditions.
Speaker 1:These happen with women that are on the pill, and the pill also overwhelms detox pathways because we are introducing a plethora of synthetic hormones into the body. We're introducing enough hormones that they shut off the communication between the brain and the ovaries, and that's actually what's happening with the pill. The communication between the ovaries and the brain is being shut off so that natural hormones are no longer produced. That just sounds creepy to me, but that is actually what's happening when we're taking the pill. Sounds creepy to me, but that is actually what's happening when we're taking the pill, and so we're introducing enough hormones that it's going to affect our detox pathways. It has the ability to overwhelm our livers detoxification systems, especially because we're also managing so many environmental toxins at the same time. Our bodies just become overwhelmed.
Speaker 1:So why does coming off the pill cause acne? So probably the one thing that I really want to emphasize that doesn't really have to do with something that pill's creating is when you go on the pill for acne, there's already an imbalance going on in your body that's causing the acne, and the pill is going to mask the acne, but it's not going to heal the original imbalance that leads to acne. It's just not so. By the time you're ready to come off the pill, chances are that imbalance is going to be even more pronounced, so that when you come off the pill, acne has the ability to rage. And that's one of the things that I take a really close look at with all my patients is I want to understand what was leading to acne before they even went on the pill. I want to get a picture of what their life was like, what their symptoms looked like when they started having acne, the things that were triggering their acne, perhaps what their menstrual cycles looked like before they went on the pill. This is all important because things such as gut issues, food sensitivities, metabolic issues, insulin sensitivity, hormone imbalances, poor detoxification, unmanaged stress these are all triggers that lead to acne even before the birth control pill is introduced into the situation.
Speaker 1:So the other thing that happens when you come off the pill is that there's a surge in androgen production. So, as I mentioned, the birth control pill is going to shut down production of androgens. If you're taking the drosperinone birth control pill, which is prescribed for women with acne, so when you stop the pill, there's going to be a surge in androgen production, the body has to start to remake it. So when you stop the pill, there's going to be a surge in androgen production. The body has to start to remake it. So at the beginning there can be this surge of production and because you have really reduced your production of androgens while on the pill, the number of androgen receptors will have decreased. So what happens is, when we get this surge of androgens, these receptors are overwhelmed, they're oversensitive and what happens is you get a surge of oil production, and this is what causes the acne is that surge of oil production when the body starts to make all these androgens, and that's going to lead to a lot of acne all these androgens, and that's going to lead to a lot of acne. The other thing that's really important is that the birth control pill decreases glucose tolerance and promotes insulin resistance. So insulin dysregulation increases the hormone IGF-1, which leads to increased androgens.
Speaker 1:And the fourth reason is the birth control pill increases inflammation in the body. It just does. And if you are prone to acne, we have to remember that acne is inflammation. So the more inflammation that you have in the body, the more acne that you're going to have. Now a lot of people have inflammation in their body, but not everybody's inflammation manifests in acne. So you might have a friend that lives a really hard lifestyle and maybe they're really inflamed, but their skin is completely clear. That's just because their inflammation is manifesting in a different way. For those of us listening to this podcast, usually our inflammation manifests on the skin, manifests as acne. The more inflamed our body is, the more acne we are going to get.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about my three-step process to conquer post-pill acne. There's three steps that have to be taken. Number one we need to balance your insulin levels. Number two, we need to support detoxification. And number three, we need to heal your gut. And if you're on the pill right now, get these three steps done as much as possible before you come off the pill. This is going to take a couple of months. If you have post-pill acne right now, let's get started as soon as possible so we can heal your body and clear up that acne. So let's talk about the first step, which is balancing insulin levels.
Speaker 1:So what is insulin? Insulin is a hormone. It attaches to an insulin receptor on the cell wall and when this attachment happens, it opens up a glucose channel and glucose enters the cell. This is important because glucose is food for the cell and we don't want glucose piling up in the bloodstream. When we have insulin resistance, when the insulin attaches to the insulin receptor, there's not a lot of action. That happens, and this means that more and more insulin is going to be produced by the pancreas because it's getting a signal that there's a lot of glucose in the bloodstream that can't get into the cell. So what we have is we get a buildup of insulin in the blood. So what happens? When we have a lot of insulin in the blood?
Speaker 1:A cascade of reactions happen that leads to post-pill PCOS, and post-pill PCOS is actually the reason why you get that post-pill acne. So a couple of really important things happen In the liver there's less sex hormone binding globulin. That's produced. When we have lower levels of sex hormone binding globulin, it's not binding to free testosterone and inactivating it, so we have more free testosterone and in activating it, so we have more free testosterone circulating through the body and, as we know, testosterone is going to lead to more acne. The other thing that happens when there's a lot of insulin in the blood, the pituitary starts to produce more luteinizing hormone and this stimulates the ovaries to produce more androgens, and when we have more androgens, this can lead to PCOS. High luteinizing hormone is one of the signatures of PCOS, and in the adrenal glands we see an elevation of an androgen called DHEA, and this, as well, is a hallmark of PCOS. So when we have high insulin levels in the blood, we basically get a cascade of reactions that leads to post-pill PCOS. So we have to really manage insulin levels well in order to prevent this reaction from happening. So how do we do this?
Speaker 1:Number one stop sugar, all sugar, and I am so strict about this because you just saw how high insulin levels are going to lead to post pill PCOS. So, as we know, sugar increases glucose, which increases insulin. We don't want that to happen. So stop sugar. Now. This is not forever, of course. This is for a period of time while we are balancing the body and reducing inflammation. Once your skin is back to normal, or better than normal, then we can start to go back to a bit more of a normal diet. I never, ever, recommend high sugar, but you can have a little bit here and there.
Speaker 1:Number two eat regular meals. So when you skip a meal, there's going to be a dysregulation in glucose and insulin levels, and that is not what we need. We need to have breakfast, lunch and dinner regularly every day, you know, to really regulate glucose levels, and your meals need to be balanced. You can't have high carbohydrate meals because that is going to stimulate glucose, which is going to stimulate insulin and make things worse. Every single meal has to include a protein and a fat and it has to be lower on the carbohydrate side. Now, I'm not huge into food restriction. However, at this point in time, I recommend eliminating inflammatory foods. So really sticking to a whole food diet lots of fruit, lots of vegetables, lots of healthy proteins and gluten-free starchy carbohydrates are fine, but eating a lot of breads, eating a lot of pasta these things are just going to aggravate your insulin levels and aggravate your acne.
Speaker 1:All right, let's talk about step two, which is supporting detoxification. So I'm going to start off by saying acne patients are notoriously poor detoxifiers, even without the birth control pill. I always need to support detoxification and drainage for all acne patients, but the birth control pill puts extra pressure on your organs of detoxification and it depletes many nutrients that are needed for efficient detoxification. So when we detoxify, we are basically converting fat soluble toxins into a water soluble form where they can be eliminated from the body. This typically takes place in the liver. There are two different phases that need to happen in this process and there's a lot of nutrients that are required to do this properly. The pill has depleted many of these nutrients, so we need to support nutrient status and we also need to really support the liver as it starts to detox, because it's been overburdened for a long time. So using a proper liver detoxification supplement that doesn't aggravate that's really important, because if we support detoxification too much, this can cause a detox reaction.
Speaker 1:It has to be very gentle and very slow at first. Naturopathic medicine really excels at this. We have so many amazing detox therapies and protocols. If you're just starting, something very simple is warm water and lemon. First thing in the morning, on an empty stomach. Have a cup of warm water with half a lemon squeezed into it. Sometimes a bit of sea salt can be helpful as well. Do this every single morning on an empty stomach, and this is a great way to start to support detoxification. Don't start anything too drastic too quickly. The other thing we really need to ensure is that drainage is happening at the same time. Before we really support detox, we have to be sure the body is draining. So, again, making sure that you're hydrated, making sure that you're moving your body, and there's some great drainage therapies Dry brushing is really helpful, saunas are really helpful, there's certain teas that can be very helpful, and I go through all of these practices in detail in my Clear Skin program, which I'll tell you about in just a second.
Speaker 1:And the third step is to heal the gut. And this is, to me, this is the heartbeat of my program, because I find that women with acne, their guts need special attention, because a healthy gut is essential for healthy skin and the link is the microbiome. So the microbiome, as I mentioned earlier, is a community of trillions of organisms that live in the gut lining and on the skin. So when the gut microbiome is not doing well, the skin is not doing well. So it is estimated that 90% of all diseases can be traced back to the health of the gut and the microbiome. This is a really big deal. So if you have other symptoms as well in addition to your acne, chances are that by addressing the microbiome, we are going to be helping heal a lot of different conditions. So how do you heal the gut? There are three main steps.
Speaker 1:So the first step is to remove inflammatory foods to reduce inflammation. For me, the main foods to remove are sugar, gluten and dairy, and there can be others as well. But my reasoning is this inflammatory foods are like adding fuel to the fire of inflammation in your body. So if your body is inflamed right now and if you have acne every time you eat inflammatory foods, you are making that inflammation worse. Foods you are making that inflammation worse. So the only way to really start to heal the skin is to remove inflammation from the body, and we can't do that when we continue to eat inflammatory foods.
Speaker 1:I've been doing this for a very long time for 18 years and it's very rarely that I'm able to properly heal the gut without first removing inflammation. And I know there's a lot of practitioners out there that claim you can continue to eat inflammatory foods and still heal, and I really don't know how that happens, because you can't heal the gut lining when it's continually inflamed. It's just impossible. And then, once you've reduced the inflammation, then you can start to address the particular gut issue whether it's bloating, whether it's constipation, whether it's belching, whether it's leaky gut, and each condition is going to require a bit of a different approach and I always love to do testing with my patients. That's the number one thing that I do with my one-on-one patients is testing. We do GI mapping testing, we do organic acid testing, we do a lot of blood work so that we can figure out exactly what's going on, exactly what the root cause of the issue is. Because when we understand the root cause of the issue, then we're able to heal it much faster and in a very targeted way.
Speaker 1:And once we've addressed these issues, then we have to repair the microbiome. We have to use prebiotics, probiotics, we have to use antimicrobials to really get the microbiome in a very healthy place, and the skin obviously is going to reflect the health of the microbiome. So those are my three steps to avoiding post-pill acne. Whether you're on the pill right now, whether you've already come off the pill and your skin is flaring, those are the three steps that you need to do, and these steps need to be followed for a period of time in order for you to, number one, come off the pill successfully or, number two, completely clear your acne. If you're currently on the pill, please do this work for a couple of months. This is really going to make a difference and when these systems are balanced, coming off the pill is going to be a breeze and, of course, when the systems are balanced, your acne is going to clear if you're already off the pill.
Speaker 1:So I have a spectacular group program. It's my clear skin group program. It's an online program. It shares my complete strategy for healing acne and this strategy is what you are going to use to come off of the pill and it's going to leave you healthier and more vital than ever. This program has now been going on for probably about six years. Thousands of women have gone through it. It has a 90% success rate. I've been fine tuning it over the years. It is to a place now where I really believe it's going to help every single person that goes through it. If you stick to it, if you're compliant, your acne will heal, your body will be balanced. You are going to feel incredible, not just because you have clear skin, but because you are going to achieve optimal health.
Speaker 1:This program addresses the mental and the emotional aspects of acne as well. So when I mentioned that if you currently have acne, you need to switch your nervous system to a parasympathetic state where your body can actually heal. This is so true If you're stressedathetic state where your body can actually heal this is so true. If you're stressed out, your body is not going to heal. We need to teach your nervous system how to relax as much as we can, and then we need to go in and do the deep healing, and the program also deeply addresses skincare.
Speaker 1:I share my favorite products with you that thousands of women have used successfully, so you no longer have to guess, and my group program is an incredibly affordable program. I've tried to make it as affordable as possible so that everybody can partake in it. So you can click the link in my show notes to learn more about that. And this program is based on thousands of patient success stories. My 18 years of clinical practice as a naturopathic doctor and I really invite you to check it out if you want to heal your acne quickly and permanently.
Speaker 1:And if you've enjoyed and found value in this podcast, I would be so grateful if you could leave a review.
Speaker 1:It helps me get this information out to more women so that they know they do not have to suffer with acne.
Speaker 1:There are currently millions and millions of women out there that are feeling the same way that you're feeling right now and if we can get the word out, if we can shift the way that we approach healing, because we know the current paradigm of healing in western medicine the accutane, the birth control pill, the spironolactone, the antibiotics these are not providing permanent relief for women with acne. It may temporarily mask symptoms, but ultimately it makes acne worse and it just keeps women in this cycle of not being well and not reaching their optimal health, their optimal wellness, not living the lives that they should. So please leave a review. We need to let women know how to heal their bodies and empower them as much as possible. So I'm sending you so much love. Thank you so much for being part of this podcast and for empowering yourself to heal your acne on your own. Click the link in the show notes for more information on my program and sending you much love.