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
Decoding Acne With The Organic Acid Test
Your breakouts are trying to tell you something. We dig into the Organic Acids Test (OAT) and show how a simple urine sample can reveal mold colonization, systemic candida, clogged detox pathways, low ATP, and nutrient roadblocks that keep acne inflamed and stuck. With Dr. Stacey Shillington and coach Holly Corcum Sears, you’ll hear exactly why some people shrug off a water-damaged home while sensitive detoxers spiral into rashes, fatigue, and stubborn cystic flares—and how to tell the difference between exposure and colonization.
We unpack oxalates and their link to sharp, persistent, painful acne, plus the upstream drivers that create them: yeast, mold, sluggish bile, and stalled sulfur pathways. You’ll learn why cutting high-oxalate foods offers only short-term relief, and what it takes to fix the real problem so skin calms for good. We also connect the dots between mitochondrial function and skin healing speed; when ATP is low, blemishes linger, turnover slows, and oxidative stress accelerates visible aging. Practical steps around fatty acid oxidation, especially relevant for PCOS, help explain oily-dry swings and recurrent “lymphatic” breakouts along the neck and ears.
Beyond skin-deep, we interpret neurotransmitter ratios that flag sympathetic overdrive and gut-driven anxiety, showing how dysbiosis blocks key enzymatic conversions and keeps mood and skin on edge. Finally, we explain why nutrient markers on OAT reveal function rather than just levels—like a B6 deficit driven by infection despite normal bloodwork—and how pairing OAT with a GI map and functional bloods creates a precise, staged plan. If you’re tired of guesswork and quick fixes, this walkthrough shows how to use data to target root causes and build clear, resilient skin from the inside out.
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Welcome to Naturopathic Beauty's Clear Skin Sessions, where we heal your acne from the inside out. Welcome to the Clear Skin Sessions. I'm Dr. Stacey Shillington. I'm a naturopathic doctor. I've been helping women heal their acne for over 20 years. This podcast is for you on your clear skin journey to give you insights, tips, and tricks on how to heal your acne because it is not easy to heal acne. There are so many different underlying causes that can contribute to the inflammation, which is acne, and that is what I'm going to help you decode. Especially in this episode, I'm going to talk about the organic acid test. So this test is not used by many practitioners because it is complicated. This is a urine test, and what it does is it detects certain metabolites in your urine and it tells us how your body is being affected by detox pathways, mitochondria, infections, nutrient deficiencies, so many things, all by seeing, you know, these organic acids in your urine. It is an incredible test. It tells us so much. And so I want to give you a top line today of how this test is so exciting for acne, all the things we learn. So, of course, I have Holly Corcum Sears with me today, who is one of the coaches in my program. We've been working together for many years, and she is a huge, you know, source of knowledge, and you know, she helps many women heal their acne. So welcome, Holly.
SPEAKER_01:Hi, Stacey. Happy to be here again talking about one of my favorite tests.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, the oat test, it's exciting. And you know, for many years as a naturopathic doctor, I was actually scared of it. I did not use the oat test for quite a few years when it first came out. I went to my first, because back then we did not have the internet. We did not really have a lot of things. I went to my first conference, they went through the oat test, and my head just about exploded. And I was like, oh my gosh, I have to like put aside an entire like week to dig into this test to really understand it. And I just I didn't have a solid week available to learn about the test for quite a while. So I put it on the back burner. Um, and then when I pulled it out again and started using it, I was like, oh my gosh, this test is incredible. It tells me so many things that I need to know to really treat my patients well. So I'm really happy that this test is part of what we do. I think it's one of the things that really makes us stand out as healers because it gives us insight that a lot of other tests are just not able to give us. And one of the things that really changed my practice from starting to use this test is the ability to see if there's any toxins being excreted from mold colonization in the body. So mold exposure is a massive thing. And it's it's really underdiagnosed, it's under-treated, and so many people have mold. Holly, I don't know, do you know the statistic on how many people out there are walking around, you know, with mold colonized in their body?
SPEAKER_01:I think probably a lot of them, especially because in North America, especially, we build our homes with paper and stone, like in our dip rock or drywall. And I guess the stats say that like 90% of homes in North America have some water damage somewhere. And depending on your genetics and how many other things that you have going on, toxicities in the body, some people are very affected by, say, a dribble in a sink in a bathroom they don't even use. And then there's some people, like usually our husbands, that can live in a house that's made of mushrooms and they're not, you know, affected at all. But until we test, you never know because it's very stealth. It's not something that we can see in blood work. So I do think, especially people who are generally unwell and have a lot of different health issues, mold and mycotoxins is often one of the original issues or an issue that's making their immune system not function as well as it should. And I think there's people just don't recognize it as a problem as much as they should.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I think it's especially a problem in our, you know, demographic of patients, because our patients are very poor detoxifiers. People that have acne, people that have skin conditions, they do not detox well, which means if you're exposed to mold, then you're just not going to be able to handle it. Your system is not as robust as, you know, other people's some systems out there, like our husbands, who can basically do anything and not flinch. Whereas we're like so sensitive to everything. So that's the one really big thing that changed my practice. When I started to run the O test and I started to treat mold, and we see it all the time. What percentage of our patients would you say have mold? I know it's kind of a guess.
SPEAKER_01:At least 30%, but maybe up to 50. And we'll talk about why there can be like the difference between mold exposure and mold colonization. And, you know, there could be maybe not mold growing in them, but an exposure, an ongoing exposure could be causing issues that we don't see in the organic acid test. But definitely if we see that there are signs of fungal overgrowth in the organic acid test, it's definitely causing a problem at that point. And I say probably 30, 25, 35% of our clients, we see with the oat test come back with some fungal overgrowth markers.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we're seeing the mold there. And usually it's probably been there for a while, you know, because obviously it's causing damage because if we're seeing organic acids in the urine that signify that there's mold colonization, then there's damage being done in the body. So, you know, it tells us that yeah, we need to act on this like right away. And, you know, we do. It's a big part of our treatment protocol. So I think that that's one of the my favorite things about the organic acid test. And Holly, is that your favorite thing, or do you have a different favorite thing about the organic acid test?
SPEAKER_01:It is my favorite, it is my favorite thing. My other favorite thing within the organic acid test is it, you know, similar to mold is yeast or candida overgrowth, because we do we don't really test for that in the blood. We can see it like as symptoms, you know, different symptoms of candida, or you've had, you know, positive um yeast infection tests recurrently over and over again. Um, and in the stool testing in the GI map, we can see it if it's very heavy in the colon. But if we don't see it in the GI map, it doesn't mean that there's not systemic candida overgrowth, which is what we can see in the markers of the organic acid test. And that's like those those kind of come together. The first kind of eight or nine markers, I think, on the organic acid test are uh mold, and one of them is arabanose, which is um a marker of candida for yeast overgrowth.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and a lot of people make that mistake. They think that they get the GI mapping test and they'll be able to tell whether or not they have candida. And that's the GI mapping test is not a reliable test for candida. I mean, it really only detects if there's candida growing in the large intestine, really. So, and candida, as we know, this is a systemic infection and it's behind a lot of acne. Absolutely. Um, so the other thing that I really think is interesting about the organic acid test, this is something we see a lot of, and there are I don't even know if there's another test that really tests for this, and this is oxalates. Oxalates are they're very damaging to the body, and they are produced by so many different things. They're produced by yeast, they're produced by mold. If there's bile insufficiency, um, you know, they're a marker of poor detoxification. And oxalates are often behind the really inflamed, painful cystic acne because oxalates are like little jagged crystals. And when you have a lot of little jagged crystals accumulating in your body, it's gonna cause pain. It's gonna cause inflammation. And as people that are prone to acne, our pain and our inflammation shows up right on our face. So when we understand that oxalates are an issue, you know, then we can put together a plan to really, you know, heal this, you know, to dump oxalates and also to make changes so that oxalates don't build up anymore. And I I we see a lot of oxalates in our patients. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:We do, we do. And and we typically, you know, we can use this to guide us to suggest people doing a low oxalate diet in the short term. But uh the oxalates in the food are not the problem. Just like when we were talking before about histamine intolerance, the histamine is not the problem. It's the body's ability to get rid of it. And often when it comes to oxalates, it's because of mold and mycotoxins and more detox. So we do remove oxalate foods in the short term, but um the the problem long term relates back to other things that are going on for sure.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, like if you suspect oxalates and you think, well, I'm just gonna go on a low oxalate diet for the rest of my life, like that's not a solution. Not a solution at all. We need to address what's actually happening in the body. And I think this is, you know, this is like my mantra. This is what I live by. Like, what is actually happening in the body? This is I'm I'm obsessed by this question. And for me, those band-aid solutions, like let's just remove oxalates from the diet, that that does nothing. It does nothing, it doesn't solve the problem. So, you know, I just get really fired up about that because it's it's a real thing. It is. Um, okay, so this brings us to detox pathways. And this is something that the organic acid test can give us a lot of insight into. There's two different parts of the detox pathway. There's phase one and there's phase two. And depending on which phase is over or underperforming, we need to treat that differently. So in this test, we are able to see what the liver is doing, how the body is detoxing. For instance, if we do see that oxalates are high, then we know that sulfation is probably not happening well in the body. Um, then we also have markers for glutathione as well, which represents phase one. So we know if there's adequate glutathione happening. We know if there's adequate N-acetylcysteine, which is a precursor to glutathione. Um, there's actually a lot of different markers in the oat test that can guide us to decipher what is happening from a detox perspective. And as I said earlier, you know, acne patients are really, really poor detoxifiers. Wouldn't you agree, Holly?
SPEAKER_01:Totally. Another thing that we can see in this test that I find really interesting is mitochondrial function. So, you know, a lot of, and this can go hand in hand with with mold and other toxin exposures, but we do have a number of two actually sections in this test that look at um mitochondrial. So your mitochondria are your cells produce energy. Um, and you know, we can feel not great, we can, you know, not be able to overcome, you know, things that we have going on, like acne or the reasons that we're having acne. And it can guide us as to like how to support mitochondria if that's an issue, especially in the short term to get people feeling better.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, because if you're if your mitochondria isn't working properly, you're not producing enough energy, you're not producing enough ATP. And ATP powers your entire body. So we're talking like if if you don't have enough ATP, that zit on your face, it's not gonna heal very quickly at all. It's gonna stick around forever. Your skin's gonna be really dull because you're not going to be exfoliating, you know, properly. Like things are just going to be slow within your body. And, you know, another thing that happens is oxidative stress starts to build up when the mitochondria are not functioning properly. And when we have oxidative stress, there's a lot of fatigue. And then there's also damage that starts to happen to this in the different systems of the body. So this is a big one. And, you know, it's something that we want to catch earlier rather than later, because if you have these poor detox pathways, if you have, you know, fatigued mitochondria, then you're you're gonna start aging rapidly. It's not gonna be pretty. We need to, you know, get that oxidative stress under control to heal your skin and to prevent premature aging for sure. So, yeah, Holly, I totally agree. The mitochondria, it's another really big one. And then, I mean, we can just go on and on for days with what this test reveals because then we can also take a look at neurotransmitters and we can see what's going on with your serotonin levels, your dopamine levels. Are you in a state of fight or flight, burnout, um, you know, anxiety? These are things that we can actually see in the organic acid test. And, you know, I think with a lot of our patients, we see a lot of anxiety. We see a lot of high HVA to VMA ratio. And, you know, it's it's a sure sign that, you know, our patients, they're stuck in sympathetic overdrive. Wouldn't you say? Wouldn't don't you like find that, you know, the acne, the person that has the acne, we're all very similar in a certain way.
SPEAKER_01:Totally. And to be honest, when I we we do organic acid tests with uh pretty much every single one of our clients at the moment. And I don't think I've ever seen or very rarely dopamine and serotonin in our patient population in within the optimal range. They are all low. Sometimes they're overgrown, which doesn't happen very often, but if those not overgrown, but they're too high, but that's can be related back to bacterial overgrowths and things like that. It doesn't mean that they're actually, you know, producing too much on their own. It's it's more likely most people we see very low serotonin and dopamine for sure.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and you know, that's really interesting. And I think this is something that people might find interesting. If you have, if your neurotransmitters are not balanced, you're experiencing anxiety, you're experiencing depression, often it's because there are infections in your gut, and these infections prevent certain enzymes from operating properly. So they're not able to convert. You know, like we're not able to convert DOPAC into HVA, for instance, properly. So, you know, we'll get build up, a buildup of certain neurotransmitters. So we're able to understand, often just by seeing the neurotransmitters, what infections are doing and what the mold, how it's behaving in the body to really upset your nervous system, your mood, and how you're you know engaging in day-to-day life. It's pretty crazy that we can see all that and understand all that from this test. It's pretty great.
SPEAKER_01:And another part that I find really interesting is, and it's a bit more Oh, Polly, I'm not hearing you.
SPEAKER_00:You turned your mic off.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I didn't mean to do that. So another thing that another small piece that's a bit science-y that I really like for acne patients specifically is the fatty acid and ketone oxidization place, because there can be a lot of women who don't deal with fats very well on a cellular level, not so much because we do test um fat digestion in this in the stool test in the GI map, but and we also look at lipid markers in the blood work. But on a cellular level, if you're not dealing with fatty acids, fat from your diet, et cetera, very well, that can come out as very dry skin or very oily skin. You know, and we do see those um issues come up in the oat with women with PCOS because they often don't deal with um, you know, fats and fatty acids very well. So it can be a piece to help us in the short term do something like supplementing L-carnitine or, you know, changing different things up to help support that part of things as well.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, that's a, you know, and when you're unable to break down your fats properly, that's gonna lead to lymphatic stagnation. So there's such a direct correlation between the two. So if you're getting a lot of acne on your neck area, around your ears, you know, a lot of that acne that keeps coming back in the same spot over and over again, that's lymphatic acne. And often that can be because you're not breaking down your fats properly. And when we take a look at your organic acid test, we see this on a cellular level and we're able to help you do it more efficiently, and that's gonna help clear up the lymphatic acne as well. So that's a really, a really interesting thing to note. And then there's also nutrient deficiency. So we're able to actually see, you know, what's going on with nutrient levels in the body, specifically B vitamins. And I think this is really interesting, and it's unlike blood. Like, for instance, if you're testing B vitamins in blood, you know, you see what's there, but you're not seeing seeing how those nutrients are being used in the body. So often if we're looking at the organic acid test and we see everything is okay, but B6 is remarkably low, it's because the body's utilizing B6 rapidly, and usually it's usual utilizing B6 to deal with some type of infection. Often, if there's yeast, we're gonna see B6 deficiency because it's being overutilized. It's not that you need to consume more B6 all the time, although that's helpful in the short term. It's not that you're not absorbing it, but it's that your body's utilizing it too quickly because there's an imbalance in the body. So that's what I like about looking at nutrients and the organic acid test is it tells us the functionality. It's not necessarily about what you're consuming. So that's that's why it's good, you know, to take a look at blood work and also the organic acid test because we're seeing what's going on, you know, more on the surface level with the blood, and then we're seeing what's going on in a cellular level with the organic acid test. So it's nice to be able to take a look at both of them together. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. Totally. Um and I yeah, exactly. The nutrient thing, we can sometimes see in the blood that women are like really high in B12 in their blood, even though they're not doing like a huge supplementation of it. But then we can see, for example, in the organic acid test that their methylonic acid is high. And that goes high when the body has an increased need for B12. So we can see that there's like something happening, there's a disconnect between what's going into the body and what the body's able to use and need on a cellular level. So, you know, that can guide us as to different things that we can do for treatment in those clients. So it's very interesting stuff.
SPEAKER_00:It's really interesting stuff. And to be honest, we could sit here all day and tell you about different markers and what the different markers mean. And Holly and I could honestly go back and forth for hours because there's there's 70 different markers, the organic acid test. And it's like one marker doesn't just mean one thing, it can be interpreted so many different ways. And honestly, I learned something new about the organic acid test all the time. Like it's one of those things where you keep on learning, you keep discovering, oh my gosh, this is connected to that. Oh, that makes so much sense. And you know, it's just like new things are opening up all the time. The longer you read the test, the more tests that you read, and of course, the more patients that you treat, you know, you just keep learning, which is what I really love about the work that we do. It's challenging. There's never a boring moment.
SPEAKER_01:Totally. I I love it. I love opening those tests. And there's it's one of those tests also that it's very difficult to read on your own. So it's you do really need to be working with somebody that's really has the knowledge into what each of those 70 markers mean and how they're they're related to each other because it's very difficult to take that information on your own and and go do something with it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah. You definitely need guidance. I know sometimes we, you know, our patients, they they ask us for their test results before their scheduled appointment. And so we send it to them and they take a look at it, and they're just like, I can't, I can't even, like, I don't even know what I'm seeing when I look at this. And I'm like, I know I felt like that too when I first saw this test. It is crazy. But this is what we do, and this is what we love. And this is such an important piece of the puzzle when it comes to really, you know, and you know, what we do is we heal acne. That's that's what we do, but oh my god, we do so much more than heal acne. We like reboot the entire system. Like, truly healing acne is not about, you know, doing this, doing one or two things. It's about an entire system reboot because acne is is like a mirror of what is going on in your body. And when you have acne, there are deep imbalances. Like acne is really inflammatory, it's really there on your face and it requires some digging. It requires investigation. It really requires, you know, a lot of I don't know, what's the right word, Holly, that I'm looking for? A lot of work. It is, it's work to heal acne. It is. There's no quick fix, there's no magic bullet supplement that we are going to give you to heal your acne. And if you're searching for that magic bullet, definitely, you know, you don't want to work with us because we are we are like into like the the most extreme makeover that you've ever experienced.
unknown:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Wouldn't you say? Like, aren't we?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, it's amazing.
SPEAKER_00:I know. Like we do like the extreme makeover.
SPEAKER_01:But you have to be ready to uh you have to be ready to take that journey with us. It's right. It's an amazing journey. But if you are not ready, you have to get ready.
SPEAKER_00:If you're not ready to take like the full journey, do the seven-week clear skin program because that addresses the foundations of clear skin. And I tell you, once you go through that program, I mean, you'll get great results from doing that program. But then you may want to go deeper. You may want to go deeper. And uh that's when we do testing like this. And usually with the oat testing, we do a GI mapping test as well because the oat test will tell us if there's, you know, some bacterial infections, they'll tell us if there's a yeast infection, but they won't, it won't tell us specific strains. And the GI mapping is going to tell us exactly what's going on in the gut. So using the bull both of them together is really a nice, it's a nice pairing. It gives us a lot of information. And then we also do the functional blood work, and Holly's like so good at the functional blood work. She loves it so much. You really do.
unknown:I do.
SPEAKER_01:It's my favorite.
SPEAKER_00:I know.
SPEAKER_01:And maybe let's talk about how the oat test differs from the mycotox.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I'll let you take that one away.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so I know a lot of people uh hear about mycotox testing. So that's specific to mold. Whereas in the oat, we look at all of the different functions in the body, how all the different processes in the body, uh more or like, and how um, you know, what's going on with each of those. And if there's been mold exposure and there's mold colonization, so there's mold growing in your body, not just that you've been around mold, and that mold is causing issues, we will see those that happen in the oat. But if you've been exposed and it's not yet colonized within your body, it could still be causing issues. So if we suspect that there's mold, we would also sometimes we also do what's called mycotox testing. And that tells us specifically exposures to different types of mold, like okra toxin, gliotoxin, those and each of those types of molds, we can kind of use different things to specifically detox those. Some some binders work better for some types of mold. Some types of mold we know come from different types of water damage. So, you know, it could be linoleum uh water damage or or gyrock water damage, that sort of thing. And some are much more toxic than others. So I sometimes like to combine the two of them, but we usually start with the organic acids test because if it's a big problem, we'll see it there. But if we are working with people and you know things are not moving, then usually we go and do a mycotox panel and that can show us what the level of mold exposure was. And then that can help us work a little bit deeper at getting that um problem sorted out and getting rid of it in within the body.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I yeah, absolutely. Sometimes when people come in, they're really sick. You know, there's a some mysterious things happening and we just can't figure it out. You know, the mycotox test is often a good place to go. And there's also the environmental toxin test, too, that we can consider running, which is, you know, going to give us a look into, you know, phthalates and glycosphate and you know, so many different toxins that are out there. And again, acne patients were poor detoxifiers. So we are more prone to toxin accumulation than people that you know detoxify really well. So I would say our patient population is very, very special and very sensitive. And, you know, it's it's important to take a deep look at these things and then know how to deal with them as well. So so I think I think we've done a really good job of explaining the organic acid test. Anything that you think we've forgotten, Holly?
SPEAKER_01:No, I think it's just it can be a test that's great for anybody, not just acne sufferers. And that's why we like to use it as opposed to going straight to mycotox or environmental, you know, toxin testing. It gives us kind of like a general overview of the entire body. And if there's, you know, a little bit of an issue here, then we can maybe go deeper. But, you know, it's it's a really great test. It can be really science-y, which is hard why it's hard for us not to go down too many rabbit holes when we're having this conversation about how much we love it. But just, you know, if you're somebody coming to us to help with your acne, um, it's something that can give us a really great overview of how the body's functioning in general, different than what we see in stool or blood.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I think that wraps up our discussion for today. Um, if you want to know more about working with us, about getting these tests done, and it's funny because I do get messages and people ask me, can I just do the tests on their own without working with you? No, we do not do that. We work with, you know, we're so passionate about helping you heal. So I don't give you these tests just on their own because they're too complicated to interpret. And, you know, often we really need to understand imbalances and work with you for a period of a few months to figure out and to heal your body. It's not something like you take a look at the organic acid test, you figure out like the five supplements that you need to take and everything's good from there. No, it's it's a system, it's a process. So to find more, to find out more about what our process looks like, there's a link in the show notes to Clear Skin Mastery. That's a free masterclass. Watch that masterclass, it gives you a more in depth. Depth under explanation of how we work. If you're not ready to do the tests, but you still want to start healing, that's okay too. My seven-week clear skin program is amazing. It's a great price point for those that just aren't ready to dive in and do the full journey. And the link for that is in the show notes as well. So I think that's all for today. Holly, thank you so much as always for coming on to talk about this amazing test.
SPEAKER_01:And thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, it's always a pleasure. It's I think it's way more fun when it's both of us on the podcast rather than just me talking.
SPEAKER_01:So we just we love you too.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but I I think you're funnier than I am. You're more entertaining than I am.
SPEAKER_01:Not always.
SPEAKER_00:Not always. Not always. All right, my dears. So thank you so much for joining us on this podcast. I hope that it has given you an aha moment, made you think about what's really going on behind your acne. But most importantly, this test can really help you understand and solve it. So have a beautiful day. And don't forget to check out the links in the show notes for the next step on your clear skin journey. If you have enjoyed this podcast, be sure to, you know, give me a like. And if you could leave a review, that would be amazing because that's how we reach new people. And when you do give us a review, we will give you the first module of the seven-week clear skin program for free. This is an amazing deal, so check out the link in the show notes to learn how to do that. Have a beautiful day, everybody, and we will see you soon. Bye.