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
The Six Barriers to Clear Skin
Why isn't your acne healing despite all your efforts? Dr. Stacey Shillington cuts through the confusion by revealing six critical roadblocks that keep smart, dedicated women trapped in an endless cycle of skin problems.
Most acne sufferers share striking similarities—we're ambitious, type-A personalities living in constant survival mode. This stress state alone makes healing nearly impossible, as your body physiologically cannot repair while in fight-or-flight. Dr. Shillington shares her personal journey from desperate experimentation to profound understanding, explaining how even her naturopathic medical training initially failed to solve her severe post-birth control acne.
The podcast dismantles common misconceptions about acne healing. While eliminating inflammatory foods creates an essential foundation, diet alone isn't the complete answer. Constantly switching skincare products damages your moisture barrier, and trying to heal skin while ignoring gut issues reverses the natural healing order. Without proper diagnostic testing, you're merely guessing at solutions, prolonging your suffering and potentially missing critical underlying factors like mold exposure, hormonal imbalances, or chronic infections.
Ready to break free from the cycle of trial and error? This episode offers clear direction on how to shift your nervous system from survival to healing mode, properly sequence your treatment approach, and work with true experts who understand acne's complex nature. Stop experimenting with your health and discover the comprehensive, evidence-based path to clear skin and optimal wellness that has transformed thousands of women's lives. Watch Dr. Shillington's free masterclass (different versions for women under and over 35) to learn her complete acne-healing approach.
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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. I'm a naturopathic doctor. For the last 20 years I've been helping women clear their acne. That's a lot of acne that I've cleared in my life and I have learned a ton about acne. And I've also learned a ton about why women are not clearing their acne. What they're doing wrong and it's not that they're not trying hard I mean, acne is so emotional, it's so traumatic.
Speaker 1:Women, we're usually desperate to heal our acne. Let's be honest, it's getting in the way of our lives. We are desperate to get rid of it. So we are trying everything, we are putting in the effort, we are putting in the time, we're putting in the money, but we are not seeing the results. And this episode is about why you're not seeing the results. The common things that I see women doing that are just preventing them from, you know, crossing that threshold, achieving clear skin, achieving optimal health. And this is consistent Women that have acne. We're all very similar. We're all very type A. We're on a mission and we're going to achieve our mission. We're generally very successful, very ambitious. We have a lot going on in our lives and this is actually part of the acne picture. So let's dig in and let's talk about why your skin isn't healing. So you're smart. You are doing so many things to heal your acne. You're doing diets, supplements, skin care treatments, but your acne is persisting, it is not resolving. So what is going on here? And this was my experience Many years ago, I had acne.
Speaker 1:It was very bad and I didn't get acne until I went off the pill in my late 20s and at that time, you know, I didn't know that going off the pill was going to cause acne. I didn't know anything. All I knew is that one day I woke up and my skin was super inflamed. I tried everything. I tried every diet I could find. I tried every topical that I could find. I spent a ton of money on skincare, on treatments, seeing different dermatologists.
Speaker 1:Now I did not want to go back on medication. That was my one thing. I wasn't going to do Accutane, I wasn't going to do the birth control pill or spironolactone or antibiotics, but I was really, really trying everything to heal my acne and nothing was budging. Finally, I went back to school to become a naturopathic doctor because I was like well, I know I need to heal acne from the inside out, but you know I'm not sure how to do that. So I'm going to go back to school to become a naturopathic doctor so I can heal my own acne and then help other women heal their acne. That was my plan and I was so excited when I walked into naturopathic school because I thought finally I'm going to get all my answers. My skin's going to be clear. I cannot wait to get my life back.
Speaker 1:But it didn't happen. In fact, my acne got worse when I got into naturopathic school and I was doing everything right, or so I thought, and my acne just kept getting worse and worse and worse. I almost quit naturopathic school because I thought my acne is the type of acne that will not heal, because I've tried everything, it doesn't work. I'm just going to be left with acne for the rest of my life. And this was incredibly disheartening. You know I was filled with hopelessness. I was about to quit and then I was like what is my other option? What else am I going to do to clear my acne? I really don't want to go on medications. I have no choice but to figure this out. So I'm telling you this story because I want you to understand that, even though I tried everything to heal my acne, it was not clearing and it wasn't until, you know, I did a few things that really it really shifted everything for me and that's what I want to share with you today. So there are six things I really identified, six things that we're all doing that are preventing us from healing, and I see these roadblocks all the time in my patients and you know let's dive in.
Speaker 1:So the first one is stress. So when I went back to naturopathic school, it was stressful. It was the most intense, you know, education program I had ever been through and I had been to McGill University and got my degree there and I thought that was super fun and easy. But when I got to naturopathic school, you know, I was crushed by the amount of work. I think in one semester we had 13 final exams Like this was like nothing I'd ever experienced before.
Speaker 1:So I was overburdened by stress, and I see this with so many of my patients, because we tend to be type A. We tend to be the type of people where you know stress actually drives us, you know it helps us to achieve more and to do more. And we're kind of stuck on that hamster wheel a little bit. And I'm not sure if this resonates with you or not, but we feel very comfortable in a stress state. It's the only state we actually know and that we're familiar with. We're stuck in survival.
Speaker 1:So I see so many women come to me. They're stuck in survival. They're like okay, what do I do to heal my acne? What are the supplements? What are the diets? Let's go, let's go. I've got a timeline, let's check this list off and I've got to heal. If this isn't working, what else can I do? And it's very type A, it's a very masculine energy. It's a very survival, the survival state of our nervous system. We need to shift out of this because when we're in a state of stress, our body actually cannot heal.
Speaker 1:And I cannot emphasize this enough because once you know I take people through my Beauty Bliss program, I start to see their nervous system shift. That's when the healing starts to happen really, really quickly. So you know, one of the biggest issues that I see are women. Just, you know, they have a list, a to-do list. They are going to heal their acne. By this time they have it all figured out, but they're not able to relax. And when you're not able to relax, you're not able to heal. So that's really simple. And the way that I've started teaching my patients how to heal their nervous system, I do it through a program that I run, which is included in all my one-on-one programs and it's called the Beauty Bliss Program, and it teaches us how to go from living in survival to living in a state of relaxation, teaches us how to stop the thought patterns that are ruminating in our heads over and over again and driving us crazy. It also helps us to release our repressed emotions, because emotions, when they're not fully felt and allowed to move through us, they cause a lot of energetic congestion in our body.
Speaker 1:And the thing is that the skin actually has its own nervous system, and this is one of the remarkable things about the skin. This is why I love the skin so much. But when we heal our nervous system on a global, systemic level, we're automatically healing our skin, because our skin responds so strongly to this nervous system shifting. So if you have acne, if you're living in a state of stress, this needs to be the first thing that you address in order to heal your acne. The other thing that so many women do is they think that eliminating dairy, gluten and sugar is the solution to their skin. They think diet is the solution. And don't get me wrong having a great diet is foundational to clearing the skin. Having an anti-inflammatory diet is foundational to clearing the skin, but it's not what's going to actually heal the skin for good.
Speaker 1:In order to heal the skin for good, we have to do a deeper dive, even deeper than diet. We have to understand what's going on on a cellular level. We have to understand if there's chronic infections, if there's toxic accumulation maybe again it's the nervous system. There's so many underlying causes underneath the diet that are contributing to acne that when we get caught up in just the diet and you know we think that it's just eliminating the gluten or the dairy or the sugar that's going to heal us that's when we get caught up in diet stress. We really do, and I have been there myself. I'm not going to lie.
Speaker 1:I spent quite a few years stressing out over my diet, trying to find the perfect diet to heal my skin. And it's true, at the beginning of healing you do have to eliminate certain foods so that we can reduce inflammation in the gut, because when we reduce inflammation in the gut and the body, we're actually able to heal the body more efficiently. It's like you know, if you have a massive fire raging and that's the inflammation in your body and you keep adding fuel to that fire, you're never going to be able to put out the fire. But if you stop adding the fuel to the fire and you start applying, you know, water and you know reduce, you know whatever to bring that fire down, that's when you're actually going to heal. That's my analogy for healing when there's inflammation. So that's the other thing that I see many women doing is fixating on diet and thinking that diet is the solution. It's not the overall solution, it's the foundation, but it's not the solution. Hopefully that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Okay, the third thing I see is constantly switching skincare and honestly, this goes hand in hand with being in a state of stress. You're constantly looking for the thing that's going to solve the problem and you're in panic mode. You're desperate for the thing that's going to solve the problem and you're in panic mode. You're desperate and I get that because I've been there and acne does take us to that state. But when you're constantly just looking at skincare and switching skincare, you know we're not actually addressing the reasons why acne is present in the first place and you're also exposing your skin to a lot of different products that can really irritate the skin. And we need to make sure the moisture barrier is healed and that it is really nourished in order to clear acne. And when you're constantly changing skincare, that's not going to happen. Chances are you're going to be using some products that over exfoliate your skin, that over cleanse your skin. They may dry out your skin and that's just going to make the situation worse. So, really, you know, you want to, you, we need to. You need to work with a professional that puts you on a really gentle, nourishing skincare protocol and that also understand what's going on in the body.
Speaker 1:If you're still having gut issues and you're trying to heal your skin, you have to reverse the order. You have to heal your gut before you heal your skin, and I see many patients and they come in and they've been trying to heal their skin for years. Yet they still have constipation, they still have bloating, maybe they have a bit of nausea, maybe they have a bit of nausea, maybe they have a bit of reflux. So if you still have gut issues, you can't heal your skin fully. And the gut and the skin are so closely related by something called the gut-skin axis and really this says that the microbiome in the gut is going to be reflected on the skin. So if there's imbalances in the gut, the skin is going to be reflected on the skin. So if there's imbalances in the gut, it's going to the skin is going to be imbalanced as well. They just go together so closely.
Speaker 1:So if you're having gut issues and you're trying to heal your skin, solve your gut issues first, then focus on the skin. And the one thing that's really, you know, interesting about the skin that I love is that the skin is kind of the last system in the body to heal. So we first we have to heal all the other organ underlying organs in the body, the organ systems in the body, in order to get that skin clarity that we're chasing. We have to make sure that the gut is in good, good working order. We have to make sure the body's detoxing properly, that there's no toxic accumulation, that there's no chronic infections, there's no mold. We have to make sure that the metabolism is working well and the glucose and insulin levels are balanced, we have to make sure the nervous system is calm. So there's so many things that we have to attend to in order to get clear skin. So if you have a lot of systemic problems, address those first.
Speaker 1:And you know, in order to do this, you really have to work with somebody that understands the body, that understands how the body heals. This is absolutely critical. You don't want to work with somebody that's, you know, just touching the surface, somebody that's, you know, just touching the surface. That is for sure. The fifth thing that I see women not doing, which is preventing them from really healing, is not testing. So there is a period of time.
Speaker 1:You know, when I first started practicing, I didn't test a lot and I don't know how. I even practiced back then. This was like maybe 18 years ago, but it was just guesswork. It really was guesswork. If you're not doing the proper testing, you are guessing at what you're treating, and this is not an efficient way to heal. So when I finally did testing, when I finally started to embrace it and understand it and utilize it on myself and in my practice, that is when I finally understood what was going on with my body. I finally saw that there was some mold. I finally saw that there was a lot of candida. There were some parasites as well. Believe me, I was not in great shape. You know, my gut was really not very good either, and because of all that, my hormones were all over the place and I was having miscarriages and I was having headaches and I had massive, massive insomnia. Like I was not balanced and I was trying everything under the sun. I was experimenting with supplements, I was trying different things in my diet and nothing was working, not until I really understood what was going on.
Speaker 1:And in order to get a complete understanding of what's going on, you have to do specialized testing and there's not just one test that's going to give you the whole picture. I know a lot of people they think that, you know, one test such as the HTMA is going to give the full picture for acne, but that's not necessarily true. It doesn't tell us if there's an. That's not necessarily true. It doesn't tell us if there's an overgrowth in candida. It doesn't tell us if there's mold. It doesn't tell us if what bacteria are overgrown Is it H pylori, is it Pseudomonas, is it strep? It doesn't tell us if there's parasites. You know. It doesn't tell us what the beneficial microbiome of the gut looks like. It doesn't tell us you know a lot of vitamin, you know deficiencies. Really, what that test is telling us is what the minerals look like, and that's incredibly important because we need to understand mineral balance in your body.
Speaker 1:But if you're just looking at that, a lot of information is not being shared about what's actually going on in your body. So doing proper testing is probably the most important thing on your journey, so then you can really strategize your healing, put together a personalized protocol and actually heal your body. And once you do this, I mean you're never going to go back. You're always going to want to know what's going on in your body so you can stay on top of the situation. It's a gift to understand your body, to be able to heal your body, to have the information you need.
Speaker 1:And the sixth thing that I see is not working with an acne expert and when you're not working with somebody that understands how the body works, that understands how acne works in the body, the pathogenesis and also the solutions, because acne patients are very sensitive. They're not like people without acne. Obviously, their hormonal profile is completely different. We have to deal with high androgens, and you know dealing with high androgens means that there's a whole set of herbs that we can't use. You know there's supplements that are going to aggravate, and we have to be very mindful of that. So you want to work with somebody that understands the intricacies of acne and you know you don't want to guess. This is your health. This is your health that we're talking about.
Speaker 1:This is not a cosmetic issue. This is not just about the skin, especially if you've had chronic acne for a long period of time. There's other things that are involved. There's other organ systems that are imbalanced and they need to be healed properly in order to have clear skin. You don't want to guess, you don't want to mess around with your health. So this is you know, in order to heal your acne it's like healing any organ system in your body you have to invest in. You know you have to. You have to take good care of yourself and the guessing is just going to prolong your acne. It's going to prolong the pain that you're feeling and things are not going to get better on their own. You know chances are, if you just keep experimenting, you might hit, you might land on something that works for a period of time, but you're not going to be able to do the really deep healing that's going to give you clear skin, optimal energy and optimal health for decades and decades and decades to come. This is so exciting, so hopefully this podcast has given you some insight into why your acne is not healing.
Speaker 1:If you've had an aha moment, if you've appreciated it, I would love it if you could leave a review. This is how we reach other people out there that are suffering with acne, that need help and guidance, and if you leave a review, I'm really excited to give you access to the first module of my seven-week Clear Skin program for free, because I appreciate the reviews so much, and I also encourage you to watch my free masterclass. I have two free masterclasses one for women under the age of 35 and one for women over the age of 35. Because once you're over the age of 35, your hormones start to shift and we need to work differently. We need to work deeper. Often, imbalances are much deeper, so it's a little bit of a different situation. So definitely watch my free masterclass. I'm going to teach you how I heal acne. So thank you so much for tuning in and I will see you in the next podcast episode.