Episode #160: Your ACNE Could Actually Be A GUT Problem! Featuring Katie Stewart

The Dylan Gemelli Podcast

In this episode of The Dylan Gemelli Podcast, registered holistic nutritionist and functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner Katie Stewart discusses the root causes of

Key takeaways

• Acne is frequently a sign of internal health issues rather than just a skin problem.
• Birth control pills can mask underlying hormonal imbalances and create new ones, especially when used during adolescence.

Main topics

• Root cause analysis of adult acne
• Impact of birth control on hormones and long-term health

Notable quotes

"When you start messing with hormones, especially as a teenager, you are setting yourself up for drastic failure."

Conclusion

Katie Stewart emphasizes that effective acne treatment requires moving beyond topical solutions to address underlying gut,

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) So many of us was given the birth control pill at 12, 13, 14, whether you had acne, painful periods, missing periods. I actually didn't have any of the above. I just took it because all my friends did. Speaker 1 (0:09) When you start messing with hormones, especially as a teenager, you are setting yourself up for drastic failure. People Speaker 2 (0:16) are like, what do you mean birth control? Like, I need birth control. It actually balances my hormones. If I don't take it, I have horrible periods. I tell them like, well, that's because your body is sending you a message that there's something going on and I can understand that we want to be stopping that horrible. that you're having but can we be getting to the root cause of what's driving that because when you eventually do come off of the birth control pill what's going to be happening to your body Speaker 1 (0:37) Do you want to know why nothing seems to help you with constant cravings? GLP-1 is the hunger hormone that everyone's talking about. But your gut was designed to make it on its own. However, it needs the right signal. Bitter receptors in your gut and mouth are directly tied to GLP-1 release. And most modern diets are extremely low in bitter foods. And so this natural pathway rarely gets activated. But have no fear because I found the answer with Just Thrive Digestive Bitters. Just Thrive Digestive Bitters. deliver concentrated bitter botanicals that activate receptors in your gut, encouraging your body to produce GLP-1 naturally, supporting healthy digestion, comfortable fullness, and a balanced appetite without any synthetic inputs. No bitter taste required. The bitter receptors that matter most for GLP-1 signaling and digestive support aren't just in your mouth. They line your entire GI tract. So when the capsule dissolves in your gut, the bitter botanicals activate those receptors. Same signal, same response, zero. bitter taste. Right now, Just Thrive is offering my listeners something special. When you start a 90-day Just Thrive probiotic subscription, you'll get a free 90-day supply of their new digestive bitters, and that's a $90 value. So visit justthrivehealth.com slash Dylan to claim your free digestive bitters with your first 90-day probiotic subscription today. All right, everybody, welcome back to the Dylan Gemelli podcast. So Thankfully, my guest is a very patient woman, being that we've had to reschedule multiple times. But she's been gracious, and I'm super grateful. I am a complex individual at times. But me and my wife both, because she can't wait to listen to you, and I am... known for being a skincare person, snobby to an extent. So I can't wait to talk to you because I've talked to like skincare companies and people on here, but not like a real expert that's been doing this for so long. That's so experienced. So I'm jazzed. I'm stoked. And I'm so thankful that you came to see me. My guest is a registered holistic nutritionist and functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner who specializes in adult acne. And for the last decade, she's had over 3,000 clients over 15 countries that have clear chronic breakouts. And she does what I love because she does root cause nutrition and functional lab testing. And so we're going to dig into what I feel is the proper way to go about treatments and finding causes and how to go about preventing instead of just treating. My friends, you've probably heard of my guest, but if not, welcome Katie Stewart. Speaker 2 (3:22) Thank you, Dylan. I'm so excited to be here. It's something I love doing is podcast guesting, having people on my podcast. So anytime I get to come and do them, and especially in person, they're so much fun. Speaker 1 (3:32) Well, like I said, you are well known in what you do, and I can't wait to get into everything that you do. I find that there's a lot of... Well, there's a lot of misconception with everything. Huge. Speaker 2 (3:46) Yeah. I'm sure we could have like a multi-part series on that. Speaker 1 (3:49) Right. So I should temper what I say here. But there is a lot of stuff that I want to get into, like with the sun, with skincare products, what's in them, the whole nine. Right. And I feel like you are one of the most qualified people that I could bring on to do this. So let's talk about you first, because I know you had some skin things that you've dealt with, which obviously were drivers into. contributing to what you focus on. Talk to me about some of the things that not only you experienced, because I'm sure what you experienced a lot of people do. Speaker 2 (4:20) Absolutely. Yeah. I originally, you know, my previous career was in television. I worked for hockey night in Canada. If all the Americans listening, that's our version of Sunday night football. So I worked behind the scenes for 14 years in major market television, where I was working with celebrities, NHL players, coaches, executives. I was also working as an on-air location host. So I was hosting a TV show every day. I was editing content, staring at my face in an HD edit suite every single day. And I actually started working on a gluten-free cooking show. This was like circa 2011. Gluten was not a thing back then, if we can remember a time where gluten wasn't a thing. Speaker 1 (4:55) And Speaker 2 (4:55) I thought this lady was crazy. Why would I stop eating bread and pasta and all of these delicious foods? And I thought, you know what? Let's give this crazy lady a chance. I took it out. My lifelong mung grains went away. Some eggs that I had and the acne issues I had been having since coming off the birth control pill in my early 20s started to get better. It didn't completely clear, but I was noticing a shift. Working in television, we obviously know it's a very visual medium. And when I was getting these chronic breakouts and I'm staring at my face in an HD edit suite all day or I'm working with celebrities and I'm seeing their eyes flutter down to the breakouts on my jawline and being 20, 21 at the time, you want to be taken seriously in your career. You don't want to look like a teenager with acne. So it was really impacting my self-confidence. And that's when I decided to go back to school to study nutrition because... I really discovered that what I was eating was having an impact on my body. Speaker 1 (5:48) Okay. Let's go back to the birth control thing because there's, I've spoken out a lot on birth control use in general. Obviously there's hormonal fluctuations there. Can you tell me what exactly happens when you take birth control first and then how it affects your skin and your hormones? Speaker 2 (6:06) Yeah. And this is a huge issue, especially I think for millennial women, because so many of us was given the birth control pill at 12, 13, 14. whether you had acne, painful periods, missing periods. I actually didn't have any of the above. I didn't need it for its intended purpose. I just took it because all my friends did. Speaker 1 (6:22) And Speaker 2 (6:22) the doctor was like, yeah, here's six boxes. I'll see you in six months. And I think I was probably on 13 or 14 at the time. And I took it for almost another decade. No idea the impact that it was having on my body. And when I went back to school to study nutrition, my very first textbook, there was a small paragraph on how birth control impacts your body. And all of these like light bulbs went off. It was like a cartoon with like the light bulbs over my house. Like, oh my God, like I had no idea that birth control could impact my body like this. And it was talking about the impacts it has on your microbiome and your detoxification organs, like your liver, the nutrient depletions that it causes. And that the fact it doesn't balance your hormones. I was like, what do you mean it doesn't balance my hormones? That's what the doctor said. Speaker 1 (7:06) It's an imbalance. Speaker 2 (7:07) It's Speaker 1 (7:08) an Speaker 2 (7:08) imbalance and it's just acting like a band-aid. It's covering the issues that you have. Speaker 1 (7:13) And Speaker 2 (7:13) not only is it contributing to existing hormonal imbalances, but it can be creating new hormonal imbalances. So when you come off of it, you're now hit with a whole slew of issues that have been bubbling underneath the surface, but you haven't noticed it because it's been suppressed. Speaker 2 (7:27) Okay. This is a whole topic. Speaker 1 (7:29) It is. You're like, Speaker 2 (7:31) where do we go? No, Speaker 1 (7:32) this is good because this needs to be discussed because a lot of people think you're fear mongering when you talk about birth control or that you're playing a side and no, we're not. We're talking truth and fact. And when you start messing with hormones, especially as a teenager, you are setting yourself up for drastic failure. Speaker 2 (7:50) Absolutely. Because so many of these women or girls that are being put on this, They're still 13, 14. Their hormones have never had a chance to settle and become what they're supposed to and start to balance themselves. So if you're just flooding your body with these synthetic estrogens, especially if you're on, you know, the like it. not just on one of the combo pills where we're dealing with the synthetic estrogens. And it's actually suppressing your ovulation. It's cutting off the communication between your brain and your ovaries. And we have to remember, our body has a hormonal system and rhythm for a purpose. And when we start messing with it, it can be having lifelong impacts. Speaker 1 (8:30) So a lot of the stuff that I did for many years in my background was working with bodybuilders that use steroids. Speaker 2 (8:36) There we go. Speaker 1 (8:36) And so it's the same thing. When you're tricking your body and it's flooding itself or shutting things down, then it forgets how to regulate when you stop. Speaker 2 (8:43) Even Speaker 1 (8:44) if it's a short time. Speaker 2 (8:45) Absolutely. And Speaker 1 (8:46) if you're going as a teenager or even in your 20s, you're not fully developed. Right? So early stage teenager. What would be one of the worst things you could do? Go Speaker 2 (8:56) and flood it with a bunch of synthetic hormones. Right. Speaker 1 (8:58) Because then your body's really screwed up because it never had a chance. Speaker 2 (9:01) Yeah. And what I hear a lot from people, it's a very triggering topic for a lot of women birth control. And I found, especially in the beginning years when I talked about this, where it wasn't widely discussed, people were like, what do you mean birth control? Like, I need birth control. It actually balances my hormones. If I don't take it, I have horrible periods. If I don't take it, this happens. And I tell them like, well, That's because your body is sending you a message that there's something going on. And I can understand that we want to be stopping that horrible pain that you're having. But can we be getting to the root cause of what's driving that? Because when you eventually do come off of the birth control pill, Speaker 1 (9:34) what's Speaker 2 (9:35) going to be happening to your body? Speaker 1 (9:36) People hate it because I just relate it right. You're playing God's work. And people don't like to hear that, but it's a fact. And if you don't want me to say that, well, you're playing your body set up. Speaker 2 (9:44) And Speaker 1 (9:45) you can say whatever you want and say that somebody is playing a side, like I said, or whatnot. It's very, very evident what happens. And this is, like I said, it goes with steroid use. It goes with GLP-1s. It goes with anything that tricks your body into doing something it's not supposed to do. Speaker 2 (10:02) Absolutely. Speaker 1 (10:02) That's why it's just people. You know what it is, is people have this mindset or one track mind. You're telling them what to do or you're trying to control them. I always say, dude, I ain't your dad. Do whatever the hell you want. Yeah. We're not going to lose sleep over it. I'm just glad you're sharing so that people understand coming from a woman that went through it to explain. Okay. So now we know what it does hormonally. How does that affect your skin? Speaker 2 (10:25) Absolutely. So like I mentioned, there's those four key ways. It's impacts your hormonal balance is going to be impacting your liver. going to be altering your gut's microbiome and depleting your body of key nutrients. Well, guess what four big drivers of acne are is going to be your gut, your detox, your hormones and nutrients. So who Speaker 1 (10:40) would have thought Speaker 2 (10:41) that, you know, the things that are going on in your body is leading to you dealing with acne because acne is an external symptom of an internal issue. And for all of these years and decades, it's been treated like a topical problem with topicals, with antibiotics, with Accutane, with Spironolactone, but they're just treating the symptom. They're not treating what's causing it. Speaker 1 (11:00) I love that. Okay. Now we're getting somewhere deep that nobody talks about. Tell me, since the gut we know is so widely discussed and understood now like it never was. So I temper what I'm going to say here because I like to be fair about pulling punches about what we're told. But let's face reality here. They're trained a certain way and that's what they do. Now that we understand more, can you just discuss what it is? gut wise that we need to look out for that could cause this problem and how do we potentially prevent this? Yeah. Speaker 2 (11:34) And I think it's a really important conversation to have because a lot of people have a misconception about gut health where they'll say, oh, I've worked on my gut. And I say, okay, well, great. What would be done? Like, oh, I take a probiotic. And I say, okay. Well, that's one tool in the toolbox. And do you even need that probiotic? Like, do you need those strains? Is it something completely different? So I like to explain to people that gut health is more than just a trendy term of, oh, I'm working on my gut health, I drink kombucha or whatever. Is you have to be looking at, well, what's going on in your gut? And for our acne sufferers, there is almost always some type of digestive dysfunction. So whether they have low stomach acid where they don't have enough. stomach acid to be breaking their food down. So if that's happening, you can be eating the best diet in the world. But if you're not absorbing your nutrients, then you're not getting everything like the nutrients, the proteins, the healthy fats that your body, your hormones, your skin needs to function and to repair. And if it's not being broken down, then that becomes a perfect little buffet for all of the bad bacteria and yeast in your gut. When the bacteria and yeast... We're going to be dealing with more inflammation. It's going to be contributing to intestinal permeability or leaky gut. It is going to be leading to symptoms like bloat, constipation, diarrhea. Speaker 1 (12:44) And Speaker 2 (12:45) that's just from having low stomach acid. Speaker 1 (12:47) And Speaker 2 (12:48) with the clients we've worked with, like conservatively over 90 % of them have had low stomach acid and they don't even know it. Because like, oh, I don't have any gut issues. I'm like, well, your skin is a gut issue. And then, like I mentioned, is we see a lot of yeast overgrowth. So candida, bacterial overgrowth like staph and strep we see quite often. And then we'll also be seeing leaky gut where their gut lining is just so inflamed that it is now allowing undigested food particles, toxins, bacteria, things into the bloodstream that shouldn't be there. and then causing body-wide inflammation, which is leading to acne. And that's just the tip of the iceberg that we're dealing with. Speaker 1 (13:23) What are some of the drivers of low stomach acid? How would somebody know that they have that going on? Speaker 2 (13:28) So a big one is going to be stress. You know, and here in North America, I think we all live a pretty stressful lifestyle, especially the bulk of our clientele, late 20s to about their mid 40s. So they're in that, you know, they have a career, they have a family, they have people they're taking care of. They're dealing with a health issue. So that stress is going to be depleting their stomach acid. Maybe we have had a growing up eating a really poor diet. You know, we've grown up just destroying our gut health where a lot of the millennials partied quite a bit growing up. So like, have we just, yeah, like the millennials really need to repair their gut health. Let's just put it that way. So I always feel like for our clients, so stress is a major driver for stomach acid issues. Speaker 1 (14:12) So nervous system plays a key role here. Speaker 2 (14:15) It's one of our core pillars. And what's so interesting, Dylan, is nobody ever wants to do it. They're all like, well, no, give me the supplement I need to take. And I'm like, you can't out supplement a fried nervous system. Like there's, you can't take all the ashwagandha and rhodiola in the world and expect your nervous system to calm down. Speaker 1 (14:30) Yeah. You know, I spent so many years focused on the fitness, the nutrition, and those are very, very important. but i was missing the most important the Speaker 2 (14:43) most important piece yeah Speaker 1 (14:44) because you know even as spiritual as i am because i say it starts with god but you you you have to get in the right state of mind because i i would do my prayers feel good and then go right back to you know where i was because my nervous system was so out of whack Speaker 2 (15:01) and Speaker 1 (15:02) there's things that you don't even realize you're thinking or feeling they're so bound up and gone you don't you don't think about them on the outside, but you are internally and don't even realize it. How big of a role does the nervous system then so play in your skin? Speaker 2 (15:19) It's probably the biggest role that it plays because when you peel back gut issues, guess what's impacting your gut, your nervous system. when you peel back detoxification and hormones and all of these issues, your nervous system truly is at the core. So you can do all the gut protocols, eat all the healthy foods, take all the supplements. But if you're not addressing your nervous system regulation, you can almost never truly heal. And, you know, I have this one example of a client who I always think about, and she was our longest worked client that we had. She worked, we worked with her for three years. And Her skin was looking great and then it plateaued. We couldn't get any further. It was looking better, but not where we wanted it. She shared with us some very traumatic things that had happened to her in childhood. And when she started to process them, work on regulating her nervous system, talking to a counselor, getting these traumas out of her body, it was like an actual miracle happened. And we just watched her acne physically recede off of her face, all from allowing her nervous system to feel safe. Speaker 1 (16:16) See, and that's I think some people that you go day by day and you don't realize sometimes even the stresses you're going through until you sit down and evaluate. Yeah. And you're like, man, why am I getting so antsy or why can't I focus or why am I angry all the time or whatever? But you just kind of get in a pattern and used to it. Speaker 2 (16:34) Yeah. And Speaker 1 (16:34) it's hard to see. Speaker 2 (16:35) And I think that's the issue is so many people are like, oh, I'm not stressed. And we're like. What do you mean you're not stressed? And they're like, oh, well, you know, I wake up at five and I go into my HIIT classes and I get the kids ready and then I'm doing this and then I'm picking the kids up and I have this work deadline. And I'm like, did you hear all of the things you just listed out? And you're not stressed. And it's because we get so used to our stress that it's our operating norm. It's like how we love to operate and you don't realize until you start listing it out. That's why we often will get our clients