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
Acne Means Aging Faster
Discover the breakthrough understanding that's transforming how women approach both acne and aging. If you're battling breakouts while noticing the first signs of aging, this episode reveals why that's no coincidence—and how one holistic approach can solve both concerns simultaneously.
Dr. Stacey Shillington shares her personal journey of struggling with both issues in her mid-30s, cycling between acne products that dried her skin and anti-aging products that triggered breakouts. The game-changing realization? The root causes driving your acne are the exact same factors accelerating your aging process.
Drawing from two decades of clinical experience, Dr. Shillington breaks down how nervous system dysregulation breaks down collagen, insulin imbalances cause glycation damage, poor detoxification forces toxins through the skin, gut infections drive inflammation, and hormonal disruptions weaken the skin's repair mechanisms. Each of these factors simultaneously triggers acne while fast-tracking visible aging.
The most liberating part? When you address these internal imbalances, you're not just clearing breakouts—you're setting the foundation for decades of naturally beautiful aging. At 51, Dr. Shillington shares how this approach has allowed her to maintain youthful skin without Botox, fillers, or endless product searching. This isn't about adding more complicated routines or expensive treatments—it's about creating true health that naturally expresses as clear, radiant skin. Ready to transform your relationship with your skin by healing from the inside out?
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Over the age of 35?
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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. I have been helping women heal their acne for 20 years as a Naturopathic Doctor and this podcast is to help you on your clear skin journey. I have been there.
Speaker 1:I understand how it feels. I understand how frustrating it is, and one thing that really frustrated me was in my mid-30s I had acne. This is when my acne was raging really badly, but I was also noticing the signs of aging. So I noticed crow's feet starting to develop. My skin was not as plump and juicy as it once was, maybe a little bit of sagging. I noticed these changes started starting to happen and I wanted to start using, you know, anti aging serums and skincare that was more geared to helping me, you know, keep youthful. But these products were causing a lot of clogging for me. They would make my acne worse, and so then I would use skincare specifically for acne and that would dry out my skin. So I was just at my wits end, trying to manage acne and aging at the same time, and then it dawned on me what I needed to do, and I'm going to share this with you. And this is so important on your beauty journey, because if you're over the age of 35 and you have acne, you are undoubtedly starting to think about what can I do to prevent and reduce the rate of aging? And this is your answer.
Speaker 1:The number one thing you need to do to age beautifully is to heal your acne, and this is the reason why the root causes of acne are actually the same as the root causes of aging. So what's causing your acne to flare is actually causing your body to age faster than it needs to age, and I'm going to break down and break these things down so you understand exactly what they are. But this is so key. You know, topicals are great and they're important and they deliver some really great actives to our skin that can make a difference liver some really great actives to our skin that can make a difference. But if you still have these imbalances going on in your body, you are going to be fighting an uphill battle. All the skincare, all the treatments, all the medications, nothing is going to give you the results that you truly desire until you heal your body from the inside out. Then you're going to eliminate acne, you're going to age beautifully, you're going to feel fantastic, and you're going to be that way for decades and decades if you continue on the path of really optimizing your health and vitality. So let's talk a little bit about the root causes of acne, because these are the same as the root causes of aging, and then I'm going to talk about how these root causes actually lead to aging.
Speaker 1:So the root causes of acne include nervous system dysregulation. I see this all the time. This is the result of chronic stress. It's also the result of, you know, thinking thoughts that you know just keep spinning in our heads, and thoughts that aren't necessarily helpful at all. Thoughts such as I'm ugly, I'm not worth being loved, I'm not this, I'm not. That you know. And the truth is we have about 60,000 to 70,000 thoughts every single day. 90% of our thoughts are the same, so we are thinking the same thoughts over and over again, and if they're not helping us, they are hurting us and they're creating a reality we don't necessarily want. And the other thing that contributes to nervous system dysregulation is emotional blockages, and these are emotions that you've not been expressing in a healthy way, and this can go back to childhood. We can have emotional blockages that are in our body from years and years ago, and a lot of these blockages actually happen in the skin, which is why we express a lot of our imbalances through the skin. So we have to heal the nervous system in order to heal acne. The other thing we have to heal is insulin dysregulation. This is the way that our body utilizes glucose, and when we're not utilizing glucose well, it's ending up in the bloodstream. It's creating a cascade of hormones that are increasing androgens, which are the hormones that cause acne. We need to teach our body how to regulate insulin levels properly.
Speaker 1:Another root cause is poor detoxification and toxic accumulation, so many of my patients are poor detoxifiers. In fact, I would hazard to say that most of my patients are poor detoxifiers, and it's very rare that I'm able to heal an acne patient without supporting their detox pathways. And when they've been poor detoxifiers for years, there's usually toxic accumulation in the body as well. This is going to lead to acne. It's going to ask the body to detoxify more than it should be, because the other organs of detoxification should be doing that work, but when they don't do that work, the skin takes up the slack, and that's often what we're seeing, and toxic accumulation is also, you know, just very harmful for us at a cellular level. It affects the way that our cells and our mitochondria work, and we need energy. We need cells to be working healthy in order to have healthy, beautiful skin.
Speaker 1:Chronic gut infections I see these all the time in my acne patients, whether it's fungal, whether it's bacterial, whether it's parasitic. Chronic gut infections, you know, create a lot of inflammation in the body, damage the gut. It affects the way that you know your entire gut works, how you digest your food, how you absorb your nutrients, and, of course, the inflammation is one of the main factors that predisposes us to acne. And then, because of all these root causes, our hormones are usually imbalanced as well. So this is a picture of what I'm seeing in an acne patient, and of course, I always do testing so I fully understand what's going on. I can map out the different causes and what I need to do to bring the body back into balance. That's how I solve acne. It works like a charm.
Speaker 1:But the thing is is that the same root causes that are causing acne are also contributing to aging in your body, and I'm going to tell you a little bit about how they're contributing to aging so you understand how important it is to heal your acne and how healing your acne is the number one thing that you can do to prevent premature aging and so that you can age beautifully. So I mean, I'm 51 years old. I've been following my protocol for over 10 years I would say probably about 15 years. I don't have any Botox, I don't have any fillers, I don't have any wrinkles. I really don't. When I do smile, I do have a few little smile lines around my eyes, but other than that, I really don't have a lot of signs of aging. So let's talk about how these root causes of acne contribute to aging.
Speaker 1:First, we're going to talk about nervous system dysregulation. When you have been exposed to chronic stress, when you have emotional blockages in your body, what's going to happen is you're going to start to break down collagen and elastin. There is a direct connection between cortisol levels and the breakdown of collagen, elastin, and this happens in the dermal layer of your skin. So I don't know if you've ever seen pictures of past presidents, you know, when they first took office, and then four years later, when they, you know, finished their presidency, or eight years later they look as though they've aged about 20 years, and that's because the chronic stress is breaking down this collagen and elastin very rapidly. The other thing that nervous system dysregulation does is it shortens telomeres. So telomeres are part of the cell and it's a organelle with it's part of the DNA. Actually it's like a little tail on the DNA. And when it starts to shorten it means that our bodies are aging more rapidly. So when we have nervous system dysregulation, these telomeres start to shorten. And the other thing that nervous system dysregulation does, it increases oxidative stress and inflammation. It damages our mitochondria. It starts to damage the very foundation of our health and beauty, which is the cell and the mitochondria.
Speaker 1:All right, and then we have insulin dysregulation, and this is a really big one for aging, because when insulin is dysregulated, something called glycation happens. Glycation is when we have a lot of glucose in the bloodstream. This glucose binds with proteins and it has an affinity for the skin, so it can do this all over the body, but glycation happens in the skin first and foremost, and glycation damages collagen in the dermal layer of the skin. This leads directly to wrinkling and fine lines. So if you're eating a lot of sugar or if you're unable to regulate your glucose and your insulin, your skin is going to age faster. This is proven beyond a doubt and this is also one of the root causes of acne. So when you start to regulate insulin and blood sugar, you're automatically reducing the rate at which your skin ages.
Speaker 1:And, of course, insulin dysregulation it's also going to drive inflammation, oxidative stress, it's going to damage the mitochondria, it's going to shorten the telomeres, it's going to disrupt repair pathways in the skin and it's also going to restrict blood flow and nutrients to the skin. So this is something when we solve this, we heal acne, we heal aging, and then, of course, there's poor detoxification and toxin buildup. So what happens when this situation occurs is that we really damage mitochondria. There's a lot of oxidative stress, there's a lot of inflammation, there's less ATP being produced and ATP is the molecule that you know really represents energy in our body. Again, toxic accumulation is going to shorten telomeres and the other thing that happens is because our bodies are not able to detoxify well through other organs of detoxification, such as the liver and the bowels and the kidneys, toxins are going to be forced out through the skin. This is going to lead to visible aging. The skin is going to be dull, it's not going to have that glow, it's not going to have the vitality that we're always looking for through our skincare products. But this vitality actually comes when we're detoxing well, when our systems are clean, when things are flowing and there's no congestion. When we're full of toxins, there's a lot of congestion that's happening in the skin, all right.
Speaker 1:And then chronic gut infections. I talked about this earlier and how chronic gut infections are in almost every single one of my patients that I treat, whether they're fungal, whether they're viral, parasitic bacterial, whether they're fungal, whether they're viral parasitic bacterial. And what happens when we have these chronic infections? It drives inflammation and inflammation. There's been a term that's been coined, called inflamaging. This is because inflammation really leads to aging in the body, in almost every different organ system. When we have inflammation, we have aging. When we have inflammation, we also have acne. So we need to resolve these gut infections. We need to improve the terrain of the body so that these infections no longer occur. We need to reduce leaky gut, we need to reduce mitochondrial burnout and we also need to heal the gut so that you're absorbing the nutrients that you get from the food you eat, so you can be eating the very best diet in the world, but if your gut is inflamed and infected, you are not going to be absorbing these nutrients and that's going to affect how you're aging, because you don't have the nutrients to keep your body operating in a vital way.
Speaker 1:All right, and then hormone imbalances. You know, when the other aspects of the other root causes of acne and aging are imbalanced, the hormones are going to be imbalanced as well. The hormones are kind of like the canary in the coal mine when they're off, it's not just because they're off, because they want to be off, it's because there's a deeper reason that's driving this hormonal imbalance. So you're going to have hormonal imbalances. If you have acne, you just are, and this is going to weaken collagen and elastin and we often see this with low estrogen, high cortisol, high insulin. It's also going to reduce repair and regeneration of the skin and we see this when there's low thyroid, low growth hormone, low progesterone. And they're also going to drive inflammation and oxidative stress when we have too many androgens, when we have estrogen dominance or insulin resistance, and when we have high cortisol or poor resistance, and when we have high cortisol or poor melatonin, we see shortening telomeres and altered gene expression.
Speaker 1:So, as you can see, the root causes of acne are driving the causes of aging. If you have acne, you are going to age faster than if you heal your acne. And this is such a profound thing to understand, because I know so many women with acne are just going crazy trying to treat acne and aging at the same time. But the secret is there's one treatment and that is healing your body from the inside out, and this is how you address acne and aging at the very same time. You do not want to be relying on skincare and treatments for aging. You don't want to be doing that. Those are nice things to use, you know aging you don't want to be doing that. Those are nice things to use. They're kind of like the cherry on top once you've done the real deep healing work.
Speaker 1:Um, if you and if you don't do the deep healing work, you're never going to get the results that you want. You're not going to get that vital glow, you know you're not going to avoid wrinkling and fine lines. You're going to avoid wrinkling and fine lines. You're going to be. You know you're going to be constantly chasing it. You know, when you heal from within. It's just there, it's part of you, it's who you are. When you don't heal your body, you're always chasing it. You're always looking for the next big thing that's going to help you look better. You want it to come from within. That's like look better, you want it to come from within. That's easy beauty, easy beauty and you feel great at the same time. So how do you do this? How do you heal from the inside out?
Speaker 1:When it comes to the nervous system, we need to rewire your thought patterns. We need to release emotional blockages. When it comes to insulin dysregulation, we need to be sure that you're eating a diet that balances your blood sugar. This is enough protein, enough fiber, regular meals. For many women, that means you don't intermittent fast. You want to eat properly. We also need to remove infections and toxic accumulation. Often, infections and toxic accumulation drive insulin dysregulation and we need to address that before insulin receptors start to work properly. Poor detoxification we need to support detox pathways. We also need to eliminate stored toxins. We need to do a deep detox for many people that have had acne, especially for years. Gut imbalances we need to resolve gut infections, rebuild the gut and hormone imbalances we need to do everything I just mentioned and provide the body additional support if it's required.
Speaker 1:So there's a system to healing acne and to, you know, being sure that you age beautifully for decades. Because this is really what it's about when you heal the body, your body is going to support you. When you treat your body well, it is going to support you. It's going to help you on your journey. It's going to help you feel beautiful so that you can be confident you can live the life that you want to live. So if you want more information on how I do this, check out my Clear Skin After 35 Masterclass. The link to watch it is in the show notes. It's completely free to watch, but it tells you a little bit in more detail what I do to heal acne, especially after the age of 35, which is going to help you age beautifully at the same time.
Speaker 1:If this podcast has given you an aha moment and you've enjoyed it, I would be so appreciative if you could leave a review. And if you do leave a review, I'm very happy to give you the first module of my Clear Skin Transformation program for free, so you can get started. You can get a taste of what my work is like and see if it resonates with you and if you leave a review. I so appreciate it, because that is how we reach women that are struggling with their skin and we start to really educate them and give them hope that absolutely, your skin can heal.
Speaker 1:Your skin is a mirror as to what is going on inside the body. Your skin is actually the most miraculous organ because it tells us so much, and when we can heal the skin, we heal everything. So hopefully this has been helpful for you. I'm sending you so much love on your clear skin journey. I can't wait to see you in my clear skin after 35 masterclass. Sending you so much love. Have a wonderful day and I will see you in my Clear Skin After 35 Masterclass. Sending you so much love. Have a wonderful day and I will see you in the next episode.