May 24, 2017
[00:00] Introduction
[03:16] Reach Higher Nutrition/GainsWave
[08:46] About Dr. Trevor Cates
[12:42] Dr. Trevor’s Skin History
[16:10] Some of the First Signs of Nutritional Deficiencies That Can Show Up in our Skin
[19:40] The 5 Different Skin Types According to Dr. Cates
[25:13] Dr. Trevor’s 2 Favorite Natural Ingredients for the Skin
[30:20] Why Water is Not the Correct pH for the Skin
[33:20] Pineapple for Skin
[41:25] Sea Buckthorn
[46:30] why Mineral Oil is Something That Should be Avoided
[56:55] 3 Ingredients of Dr. Cates to make a Skin Mask
[59:29] Cleanser Recipe
[1:04:04] End of Podcast
Ben: Hey, it’s Ben Greenfield. I am in Carmel, California attending a private (yes, private) masterminding event down here, but I had a great work out. I’ll tell you what it was. This is one of my go-to workouts. I ran to the gym here, and if the audio sound funny, by the way, I’m in my big cavernous, echo-y hotel room rather than my slick little home studio. Ran to the gym and I did a weight training complex. I have this habit now of when I’m at a conference or at an event like this and I know time is tight, I use barbell complexes, or dumbbell complexes, or kettlebell complexes; whatever happens to be available. And one of my favorite complexes is the following: I load up a barbell with a lot of weight and I pick up the weight like a deadlift, and then do a Romanian deadlift, and then do a bench row, a front clean to, I guess, just a clean to a front squat, to an overhead press, to a back squat to an overhead press. And I do all that without setting the bar down and then I just do as many repetitions as I possibly can. I recover with mobility work for about a minute or two like a walking or crawl position type of mobility moves like bird-dogs or fire hydrant exercises, Google those if you don’t know what they are, and then I go back to the barbell and I do another complex. Again, as many as I can do until I put the bar down. Usually if I’ve got a 135 pounds at the bar, for example, I’ll be able to do five or six reps and I’ll just do that three times. Boom. Done. That’s it.
Lift heavy stuff. If you have no option, either lift heavy stuff or find whatever cardio machine you can that moves as many body parts as possible like the rowing machine or the elliptical thing with the arms on it and just go to town with very short, explosive intervals on that. Either barbell complexes or intervals are gonna give you the most bang for your buck especially when you’re on the road like I am a lot right now. Speaking of which, that’s why you’re not getting a lot of listener Q&A on the podcast these days, but fear not. We are returning to listener Q&As with some cool little twists and surprises, that I think you’re gonna be quite pleased with, thrown in beginning next month, June, if you’re listening to this podcast at the time that it is released. After Carmel, I’m gonna be flying over to Bulgaria to speak at a little conference in Sofia, Bulgaria, and then I’ll be flying back right here to Monterey actually to raise this Spartan Race in Monterey. So you can follow all of my travels and my adventures and meet up with me even in Sofia, Bulgaria, yes, if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/calendar.
One other thing, be sure to leave this show a review in iTunes. Reviews really help to spread the love, I believe the 5-star reviews. Say something nice and in many cases I will choose just a few select reviews and send goodie packages out to reviewees, but I think I get in trouble if iTunes knows that I’m bribing you to leave reviews. So just leave it out of the goodness of your heart and act really surprised if a gift winds up at your front door step or someone contacts you out of the blue like a creepy stalker to ask for your address so I can send you stuff. iTunes. Do search for the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show. Leave a review. Easy as that.
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So have fun with that one and also have fun smearing your face with avocados and papayas because that's what today's show is about. It’s with my friend Trevor Cates. Actually got to hang out with her in Phoenix a few weeks ago. She’s super nice. I hadn’t met her before recording this podcast, but I can attest to the fact that her skin actually is quite beautiful. She practices what she preaches. She smears things you could eat on your skin and she really knows what she's doing. I was able to pick her brain and she actually is super duper smart. So have fun smearing food on your face and enjoy today’s show.
In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show:
“We’re exposed to toxins in a number of different ways and our air, water, food as well as our personal care products. We don’t have control over this total load of toxins we’re exposed to, but we do have control over what we put on our bodies. So it’s a great place to reduce your overall load of toxins”. “There’s this misbelief that you have to choose between natural or more effective and so I started to really digging in to the research on this because it didn’t make sense to me that natural couldn’t be effective because I’m a nature kind of doctor”.
Ben: Hey. What's up, folks? It’s Ben Greenfield and I need to actually tell you one thing before we jump in to today’s show. If you hear the sound of what basically sounds like gases escaping and pumps operating in the background that is not me with bloating and indigestion. It’s actually the fact that I'm wearing these special decompression boots while I'm standing at my standing desk just to see what it feels like to podcast while wearing graded compression boots that like pushed gases from my feet up to my hips. So, by the way, my guest today is Doctor Trevor Cates and, Trevor, I want to assure you I am not farting. Those are just my recovery boots in the background.
Trevor: Good to know.
Ben: Yeah, just in case. Anyways though, for the rest of you listening in, I have no clue who Doctor Trevor Cates is. I’m gonna introduce her in just a second because if you've ever considered like grabbing an avocado or a papaya from your kitchen and smearing it all over your face, or maybe like dabbing some pineapple or some green algae on your skin then this is gonna be an episode that's right up your alley. And if you haven't thought about doing that stuff and you’re instead still smearing things like parabens and phthalates, and estrogen disruptors, and man boob bestowers in your hair and on your skin and your nails then you're definitely gonna want to listen in because you shouldn’t be doing that stuff. And you’re gonna learn about some pretty cool alternatives in today's show because Doctor Cates wrote this new book. It just came out. I just read it. It’s called “Clean Skin From Within”, and she kind of talks to you about how to transform your skin from the inside out, things you can eat to help with your skin, food things that you can smear all over your body. Really interesting book. Cool approach to everything from like acne and eczema to just having skin that looks like a newborn baby’s butt.
By the way, Doctor Cates, that’s what you should have named this book ‘Skin like a newborn baby’s butt’. Just imagine the cover would be a lot different than the chia seeds and the wooden spoon that you currently have on the cover, I would imagine. Anyways though, so who’s Doctor Cates? She's a naturopathic physician. I've had a chance to hang out with her at this yearly summit that I go to called the Consumer Health Summit. She's a really cool, real person. She was actually appointed by Arnold Schwarzenegger to California's Bureau of Naturopathic Medicine. She works all over the world at all these different spas. She sees patients in her own private practice which is in Park City, Utah where she focuses on things like graceful ageing and glowing skin. Who doesn’t want that stuff, right? And she believes the key to healthy the skin is inner and outer nourishment with the type of non-toxic ingredients that we're gonna talk about on today’s show. So finally, if you want the show notes for today’s show go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/cleanskin that's bengreenfieldfitness.com/cleanskin. So Doctor Cates, welcome to the show.
Trevor: It's great to be here.
Ben: By the way, can I call you Trevor or do I need to call you Doctor Cates the whole time?
Trevor: You can call me Trevor, of course, and since people can't see me, but they can hear me, so they’re not gonna be confused by the fact, hopefully, that I have a man's name, but yes!
Ben: That's right. Man's name and enraging acne and eczema all over your face. No, I’m kidding.
Trevor: No. (laughs)
Ben: Did you use to have bad skin or were you like one of those wounded healers who had really, really poor skin at some point in your life? And the reason I ask is because my wife used to have like really horrible eczema and that was actually how we got introduced to eating in a little bit more of like an ancestral and healthy way. She found this random fringe book at the library by this guy named Dr. Loren Cordain. It was called “The Dietary Cure For Acne”, and it turns out he's like the father of the paleo movement and she brought this crappy little book home from the library to me, the bodybuilder who has like eaten tuna fish out of the can, chicken, broccoli. That was my kind of like my go-to and she starts to get into these things like avoiding grains and avoiding commercial dairy and eating more paleo-esque and her skin healed right up. So that was like one of our first experiences with nutrition and eating a more healthy diet was actually my wife trying to heal her your eczema. So were you similar? Do you used to have bad skin?
Trevor: Yeah. I had a lot of problems with my skin when I was a kid. I had a lot of eczema, hives; more allergic types of skin issues. I've actually really had fickle skin my entire life and that's one of the reasons why I realized thick skin is like our magic mirror that gives us great information about our overall health. And the health of our body shows up on our skin. That's our largest organ right on the surface of our bodies so it does give us a lot of information, and it's one of the things that when you are on the right track just like your wife, and figured out when you're on the right track with your eating, your lifestyle then, it'll show up on your skin. And if you're not, that's a good indication that something’s out of balance, that something's not quite right, and there may be a root cause behind that.
And they were so quick to, in today's world of dermatology, commercial dermatology, to just put a cream on there. Topical steroid or an antibiotic that's just gonna suppress the symptom or for women, covered up with makeup. But if you're not paying attention to your skin, really missing out on the opportunity to learn more about your body and about what a healthy diet and lifestyle can do for you, and that is what I found out as a kid. I really struggled with my skin and my parents took me to see a lot of different specialists, dermatologists, and different allergy specialists, and I just kept feeling worse and worse. And I would have allergic reactions or adverse reactions to the medications or treatments that they gave me and it was so difficult at that time. I remember it so well because you can't hide your skin that well especially when it's really inflamed and as a kid or really anybody walking around with skin issues is a very difficult thing. And so, other people see it, they judge you for it, you feel bad about yourself. So it was really a tough time, but luckily my parents found a holistic practitioner that they took me to and that's the one thing that turned my health around, that made my skin improve in a more holistic, integrative approach.
Ben: Yeah. I know exactly what you’re talking about when it comes to things in your skin being hard to hide. I remember when I was a kid, it was my nose. I would always get like the zits on the end of my nose. I would get so embarrassed. I even got to the point where I would actually access my mom's makeup bag and figure out a way like you know, a 14-year old boy in his mom's makeup, trying to figure out how to cover up like the giant zit on the end of my nose so that the girls would look at me funny. And I remember, for me, you'll laugh at this Dr. Cates because you talk about stuff like this in your book and I’ve certainly talked about issues like this on my show before. I was drinking almost a full gallon of just like 2% milk from the grocery store every single day and I'd be broken out in acne, and I had no clue why. I had no clue. I would shove it, not only now as I’ve found out I’m lactose intolerant, but you know when you're drinking homogenized, pasteurized milk and getting all those undigested proteins crossing your blood gut barrier causing immune reactions and insulin issues and acne, it's no surprise that I had those type of issues, but you're right you can't hide it and it can be embarrassing. It is certainly an issue but you said something earlier that I don't necessarily want to gloss over and that's the fact that you can see nutritional deficiencies on your skin which sounds great but can you give a concrete example? What's an example of something that happens on the skin that shows an underlying nutritional deficiency and not just maybe the fact that you're eating crap, but that something's missing or something needs to be added in?
Trevor: Right, and you know like partly what we're talking about with the acne is eating things that trigger a skin issue, but there are also other root causes that can trigger skin issues, and nutritional deficiencies is definitely one of them. As a naturopathic physician it is something that I look at closely. And I’ve always looked at it closely as part of people's physical exam, looking at peoples’ skin. I give a couple of examples and a lot of these people don't even realize that they're related to nutritional deficiencies. One of them is called Keratosis Pilaris and it's these little bumps on the backs of your arms. A lot of people get these. A lot of these people think that it’s dry skin. The little tiny bumps, you look closer, they look like tiny little pimples and very common we have these and it's oftentimes an essential fatty acid and or zinc deficiency. So if people just get more of those nutrient in their diet or maybe take a supplement then that can help.
And then another example that we see pretty often is these little cracks in the corners of people's mouths. It looks like little sores. Sometimes little cracks and they can get painful, it can get worse and people will just keep putting petroleum-based [17:55] ______ on them and try and do things like that. But what it is is oftentimes it’s a B vitamin deficiency and so people, again, just get more B vitamins in their diet, maybe take some supplements. Some people need, do best with, like a B12 or a multi-B injection, but to get more of these and then it’ll clear up. And so people end up with nutritional deficiencies for various reasons. One, because maybe they're not eating very healthy. That's certainly a common something to think of that’s kind of a no brainer, but then also sometimes our digestion and absorption is not very good. So people can have the healthiest diet and sometimes I see these skin issues and people that have a very healthy diet but the reason why it's a problem is because they're not actually digesting and absorbing the nutrients from their food. So then we need to work on the gut health too.
Ben: Right. Yeah, I think it's really interesting. You talk about dandruff and chronic dry skin, which I know a tone of people get, is an omega 3 issue, and when you look at the omega 6 to omega 3 fatty acid ratios are 10:1 or 20:1 and should be closer to like a 4:1 or less. So like your omega 6 is to omega 3, it's no surprise that so many people have skin issues that could be fixed or dandruff issues that could be fixed by doing something as simple as maybe eating a little less peanut butter, a little bit more wild caught fish and it's kind of interesting. You go into a lot of these little nutritional deficiencies in the book, but it is funny how your skin can be kind of a picture of what's going on deeper down inside the body.
Trevor: That’s true.
Ben: You talked about the five skin types in the book and this is kind of interesting. Can you go into, and I realize this is a huge part of the book, you don't detail every single skin type in extreme detail, but just going to these concepts in the book that you have of these five different types.
Trevor: Absolutely, and what I wanted to do is redefine skin types because I don't look at my patients as a skin disease or a health issue. I look at them as people and everybody is, you know there's a variety of people out there, and so what I did is I redefined the skin types instead of calling them dry, oily, mature, sensitive, those types of skin types. I gave them all, there are five different skin types, I gave them all human names. So they're based upon some of my patients and their categorized based upon the root causes behind them. So it's not just how your skin appears, but what is really going on behind the issue so that you can address the root cause. So if you can find your skin type whether it’s Amber, Olivia, Sage, Emmett, or Heath, then you can help start looking at those root causes because when I was writing my book, in naturopathic practice I work one on one with people and I know I couldn’t do that in the book. It’s a very different kind of approach, but I wanted to help people here how to individualize and get to the root cause because it’s so important for skin issues, and so that's why I created this five different types.
Ben: Okay. Gotcha. So each of these different skin types, you've got different names for them. So there's Amber, there’s Olivia, there is Heath, Emmett, and Sage. Beautiful names. So walk me through like are there any that would be a more common skin type that you think more people have, or is it pretty kind of random spread out throughout the general population?
Trevor: It is interesting because I do live events or a meeting in person with people when people are contacting me. There is a spectrum of all of them and it's not that there's one more than the other. I mean I think that with the Sage skin types it’s gonna be more of an older demographic because they're more interested in and they're concerned about premature aging; that their skin is aging more rapidly. So you're gonna see with the older demographic, you’re gonna see more Sage types. Olivia skin types they tend to have more of the oilier acne prone skin since acne is the most common skin condition in the United States and it’s the eighth most prevalent disease worldwide that would probably be a more common one as well. But I also see a lot of Heath, Emmett and it's really interesting that there is a variety and that's why I was looking for these patterns from the patients that I’m seeing and that’s why I play with those.
Ben: Yeah, and you kind of break down each type like for Olivia, that tends to be the skin type that has more acne, you talk about the root cause of that is blood sugar issues because insulin production and high levels of insulin triggers sebum production and androgens activity, and we’ve talked about that before on the show, but then you talk about how that particular skin type like other things you look at are hormonal balances because you tend to find androgens like testosterone, like high amounts in women for example, could trigger acne. You talk about microbiome disturbances. How in many cases the skin microbiome, specifically, is disrupted and that's another way you can get acne and then you talk about inflammation. And so, it's kind of interesting because you can kind of use this as a way to look at your specific skin type, the skin issues that you deal with and then at least get some clues as you dig in about what you can do or what kind of disturbances might be causing your skin issues. So it's a cool approach.
Trevor: And I talk about how you kind of identify that, but I also have an online skin quiz and people can take that by going to theskinquiz.com.
Ben: Okay.
Trevor: Just a breezy theskinquiz.com. It's just a few questions and it helps people determine which of the skin types they are and it gives some recommendations based upon that. And then in chapter six of my book I talk about how people can customize their 2-week program, because I talk about a 2-week program to do in the book, and they can customize it based upon their skin types. So it’s good to identify that when people get the book, so it really helps tailor that. I give them specific recommendations on diet changes. Things that supplements that they should consider adding as well as topicals.
Ben: Yeah. Well, if you’re really on top of things, you know, that you can have an app for that. That’d be pretty cool if you actually had an app that you could like take a picture of your face with and it would tell you your skin type.
Trevor: Right.
Ben: I had apps like that for plants. I do a lot of foraging and I have one called Plant Snap which is more like automated artificial intelligence and then I have another one called Flower Checker which actually has a team of live botanists on the other end and I’ll take a picture of a plant and it automatically will send me back what the plant is, if it's edible or if it's gonna kill me, what its medicinal properties are. So you do the same thing for the face and the for skin health. There you go.
Trevor: Well, the skin quiz is really easy. I mean it’s just a few questions. I can help people determine that just based upon the answers to their questions.
Ben: Well, if you do the app I’ll give you my address later for the royalty checks. There’s some interesting things that you talk about in the book that I want to dig into. One of the first things that I noted, because I'm constantly like underlining with the pen and a highlighter as I go through books and I’ve definitely got this page folded over, is you have two of your favorite natural ingredients for calming the skin. For calming inflammation, specifically, in the skin. You talk about how most chronic skin conditions from acne to eczema are triggered by inflammation, but then you have two things that you use to calm down the inflammation. Can you go into what those two ingredients are and why you chose them?
Trevor: Yeah, absolutely. Arnica and Aloe. Aloe is a lot of people think about for topical burns and those certain things, but it's really healing for the skin. It’s not just good for burns but really our skin gets a lot of wear and tear every day. We get exposed to the sun and pollution and then certainly if we have inflammation, it’s one of those ingredients that’s gonna really help soothe and calm the skin.
Arnica is another one that a lot of us people think of as like the homeopathic remedy or the topical that people use for bruising and soreness. It’ actually really great for the skin too and, for example, it’s really great for dark under eye circles. That's one of the kind of things that people can put on topically to help with reducing the dark under eye circles, but it's also soothing and healing to the skin. And if you think about the fact that our traumas and bruises, just think about the same thing with the skin. Our skin is getting kind of beat up everyday. So it's another great ingredient. I love those two ingredients for topicals.
Ben: So aloe vera, that’s actually something I’ve used before. I was just telling you about this before the show, I actually make a skin serum now and one of the ingredients in it is aloe vera. And I do a lot of Spartan racing and one of the things I found with aloe vera and the research on it is that it helps with fibroblast cell building and like removal of scars. It helps skin tissue to heal faster when you apply it. So I just spray this serum on all my little wounds, my elbows for example right now, because I just got back from filming a reality TV show for Spartan back in Atlanta and I'm just like covered with scrapes and bruises from, they have this thing called, the slip wall and my brother was like, my 6’ 6”, 250 pound brother, is like climbing up and down me with his Spartan racing cleats on, so I’m just like covered in these scars. But aloe vera is really useful for that and when you're using aloe vera, are you just recommending people go and get just like the green aloe vera bottle that you can find at the grocery store or when you say aloe vera, are you talking about like eating it or how exactly are you recommending to use it?
Trevor: That’s a really great question because in my book I talk a lot about what you can do internally, but also what you can do externally and I feel a lot of what we can do to help our skin is from the inside out, but what we topically on our skin is important. If you get the book, I mean when you read it, you’d probably notice there are a lot of things that I recommend internally for the skin maybe what also you can use externally. But in this instance I'm particularly talking about using it externally. I do have aloe and arnica in my skin care line and I chose those ingredients for a reason because of their anti-inflammatory and healing properties but you can also get it, I mean one of the things I tell people is to cut out the toxic ingredients.
I shared 20 different toxic ingredients to definitely avoid and I want to get people alternatives instead to look for. So I don’t want to just tell you what to take out. I want to tell you what to put in. So when you're looking at skin care products, these are some of the ingredients to look for. You also can go and get an aloe plant and cut it open and squeeze it and get that gel and put it on your skin or you can get it in a whole foods store. What you don't want to do is get the bright green stuff that has maybe a teeny little bit of aloe in it with mostly chemicals.
Ben: I was hoping you’d say that because like the ones that you get at the grocery store, if you look at the label, they really are just a chemical cocktail with a little bit of aloe vera in them. So choose wisely. Go for the organic clean stuff if you’re gonna use it topically or ingest it. And by the way, one of the guys who we actually hung out with at the consumer health summit that I mentioned earlier, my buddy Shawn Stevenson, I did a podcast episode with him about things you can eat that will help to build your body's own natural stem cells and something he used to actually heal his spine. He did a lot of internal aloe vera. So it actually is kind of a cool thing to have around for your skin topically or if you’re healing your body internally. It's a very, very cool plant. I’m a fan of it. So aloe vera and arnica are your two favorite natural ingredients, but then there's another natural ingredient that you kind of shove into the bus that you don't like very much in terms of like skin care and that's water. You talk about how water is actually not something that you're a fan of for using quite a bit with the skin. Why is that?
Trevor: Yeah. So water actually has a neutral pH of seven and our skin does best, it’s healthiest, in a mildly acidic state. So in a four to five pH range, is what I’m talking about with mild acidity, and even water with a neutral pH of seven disrupts that natural barrier that our skin needs in order to be clear and aging gracefully because when our skin starts, a lot of products that we use on our skin have a high pH like a bar soap but it suds up like that, that's a sign that it has a high pH. People are using a lot of these products on their skin, but they're actually disrupting that natural barrier that our skin needs in order to stay clean and clear and not wrinkling up too fast.
Ben: So when you look at a lot of these natural skin care products that are saying like they're alkalinic or they’re gonna restore the body's alkalinity, you actually don't want that. You want a slightly more acidic thing that you can put on your skin when you're looking at the pH of a product?
Trevor: When we're talking about externally and what you're putting externally, topically on the skin, yes, you want it to have a mild acidity. There’s so much focus on the diet and what we want to not eat acidic foods like sugar or dairy, but these things topically, we want some mild acidity. We don’t want them too acidic. So I’m not saying extremely acidic. It’s that mild acidity and a lot of skin care products are not in that ideal pH range. And so when I was doing research on, for about five years ago when I was working in some of the spas, people kept asking me about natural products that actually worked. And there was some confusion and some concern about that with my patients as well as dermatologist and aestheticians that I talk with that there's this misbelief that you have to choose between natural or effective.
And so, I started really digging into the research on this because it didn't make sense to me that natural couldn’t be effective because I’m a naturopathic doctor. So I started looking and so one of the things that people were missing was this mild acidity because our skin needs this amount of acidity and when we disrupt that we're just gonna have problems at the skin and it also impacts the skin microbiome. And you probably have talked a lot about the gut microbiome and gut dysbiosis issues and those do impact the skin microbiome, the microorganisms that live on our skin and protect our skin. There's a delicate balance there. So what we eat plays a role in that, but what we put on our skin also can impact that, and pH is a big part of that.
Ben: Okay. Got it. Now, when you're talking about acidity, I know one of the things that you mentioned in the book when it comes to something I would consider to be acidic is pineapple. Now, when it comes to pineapple, the reason that you would use something like that on your skin is because it is more acidic. Are there other things going on when it comes to the pineapple because I mean we mentioned aloe vera and arnica, but I know you definitely talk a little bit about pineapples, a way to detox the skin. Is that for the acidity or is there something else in pineapple that you're using?
Trevor: I got to mention that if you still go too acidic you can actually damage the skin too. So you want to be careful with that pH balance, but the thing about pineapple is, yes, it is somewhat acidic, but the other great thing about pineapple is bromelain. There's an enzyme in pineapple, bromelain, that helps eat away the dead skin cells, and so I actually use pineapple fruit extract in one of my skin care products, in my serum, because it has this Pacman effect on eating the dead skin cells off the surface so that our skin can be smoother, and we can have that skin cell turnover that we need for our skin to have that healthy glow.
Ben: Interesting. So I’ve used bromelain before for everything. It's obviously a component of digestive enzymes. I also did a podcast with these guys who make it like an enzyme complex that is very similar to digestive enzyme but you actually take it for muscle soreness. It helps to break down fibrinogen internally to assist with muscle soreness and you'll find bromelain and papain from papaya, I believe, trypsin and chymotrypsin, and some of these other enzymes, and things like wobenzymes and other enzymes that people will take for soreness. What you're saying is you can actually apply things with bromelain in them such as like a pineapple extract to the surface of the skin. So instead of just taking it internally, you can apply this stuff externally?
Trevor: Yes, yes. And as part of a formulation. I wouldn't use just pineapple straight by itself because that can definitely, especially for sensitive skin like myself that would burn the skin. But if you make it in a DIY recipe or if you have it as part of a skin care product that can be an excellent ingredient.
Ben: So basically it's hydrolyzing the proteins on the surface of the skin and helping remove dead skin cells. You’re essentially like turning over your skin cells more rapidly on the surface of your skin?
Trevor: Yeah, absolutely.
Ben: Now, for something like that, can you literally just like in a pinch, use pineapple like, I know this sounds weird, but just like smear some pineapple on your body from pineapple that you get from your local tropical food store, or pineapple juice, or something like that? Or do you need it to go with like some kind of a pineapple essential oil or extract?
Trevor: You know the pineapple itself in a D. I. Y. skin care recipe. You can blend it up like you would a in a smoothie or in a food processor, and just use it that way and you could mix it with yogurt. To make it thicker, some almond flour, chickpea flour, and if you want it to have some more enzymatic properties, you can even add papaya in there too.
Ben: It’s like a marinade for your skin. Actually upstairs right now, I was hunting in Hawaii. I was hunting very near some of these pineapple fields down in Kona and one of the animals that I harvested down there and brought back was sheep. So I’ve got a lot of like mutton and mutton is a meat that does need to be marinated to make it soft and tender. And so literally upstairs right now I have mutton in a Ziploc bag with a little bit of pineapple, little bit of yogurt, some chili peppers, some ginger, some garlic, and some rosemary marinating, and I’ll throw that on the grill tonight and kind of slow grill it, but it's kind of interesting how some of the same things we use to make meat more tender can be used on the skin to turn over dead skin cells and to heal the skin a little bit more quickly. So kind of a cool crossover plus you can always smear on your skin and then throw it in a Ziploc bag as a marinade, right?
Trevor: (laughs) Well, you don’t want to leave it on that long. You only want to leave it on for a few minutes, five to 10 minutes tops.
Ben: Good to know because I tend to overachieve and I'd be more likely to just like leave it on the skin all night long and wake up with my skin peeling off.
[Music plays]
Ben: Yo. I want to interrupt today’s show to tell you about two, yes two, count them, of my favorite ingredients. Number one, this is something I use everyday. Turmeric. It's a natural pain reliever. It's an anti-inflammatory friggin’ miracle. It promotes a healthy response to inflammation in your body. Anything you blend it with becomes more absorbable. The list of benefits of turmeric goes on and on. And then ashwagandha is the other one and that's an adaptogen and what that means is it helps your body cope with stress like cortisol, toxins in your environment, and it's made up, ashwagandha is, of different amino acids, and vitamins, and herbs, and plant extracts that modulate your stress response. So there is this company that has taken ashwagandha and turmeric and blended it with lemon and coconut water and macha green tea, beets, mint, spirulina, moringa, chlorella, just about everything in the kitchen sink and then they deliver it to you in a convenient little package powder with no messiness and no clean up, because I know you're super lazy and you don’t want to like go out in a garden and pick all the stuff yourself especially ashwagandha. Where the heck do you get that? And you put it in a smoothie or you blend it up. I actually put a packet, don't laugh, in a cup of coffee this morning and it actually taste like coffee with wheat grass in it. Yeah, that’s a new invention of mine. Anyways, I'm gonna trademark that. But in the meantime, you can get this stuff over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/organifi. It’s called Organifi Green Juice bengreenfieldfitness.com/organifi with an ‘I’. Organ –ifi. Use discount code mentioned there and that will get you 20% off of anything from Organifi. Check it out.
This podcast is also brought to you by something brand new in my home. They sent me one of their mattresses. Now these mattresses, probably my favorite part about it, is it stays cold during the night, which is great because your core temperature needs to stay low during the night in order for your nervous system to heal, but it's also got this sleep surface that you sink into but not in like a water bed-y way. It's got like a little bit of bounciness to. It’s got a little bit of sync to it and, best yet, it is extremely, extremely affordable. Meaning that they go around the middleman and they deliver a mattress in this cute little box straight to your house and it's got supportive memory foam. It's got that breathable, cooling surface, and the company that has this, and the company that I love so much that I got a second mattress for my spare room, is called Casper. Casper, you can get one of these mattresses for 100 nights risk-free by just going to casper.com/ben, and the promo code that you use at casper.com/ben is ‘Ben’. B. E. N. that's saves you 50 bucks off of any purchase from casper.com/ben. Use discount code ‘Ben’. Check it out and have a wonderful, cool, bouncy or non-bouncy, depending on what kind of sink and bounce you want, kind of sleep. It’ll just kind of mold around your body. It’s perfect. Check it out, casper.com/Ben. Use discount code ‘Ben’. Let's get back to Doctor Trevor Cates.
[Music plays]
Ben: Another interesting one that you talk about that I actually discovered when I was in Finland a couple of years ago when I was on a walk down by the sea, and there was this vendor selling these dark orange berries. I tried a few and they're really flavorful and then later on one of my friends there in Finland actually served me a cocktail that night. I believe it was a little bit of vodka, and a little bit of sea salt, and olive oil, and then this dark, dark orange liquid that I later found out was this stuff called sea buckthorn, and then I found it in your book. What is it about sea buckthorn that makes it something that you could use for skin care and how would you use it?
Trevor: Yeah, it is a great ingredient topically for skin and actually internally as well. It's rich in omega 3, 6, 9, and 7. So it gives you a great balance of omegas which help nourish and hydrate the skin externally and then it also is a great source of vitamin C. It's a very potent source of vitamin C. So the essential fatty acids in vitamin C are really great externally for the skin. Although, I also have people that take it internally as a supplement.
Ben: Now, you mentioned omega 3 and omega 6 that a lot of people know about which we mentioned earlier, but you also mentioned omega 7 and omega 9. Why are those important and why is it that not a lot of people talk about omega 7 and omega 9?
Trevor: Yeah, certainly there's a lot of talk about omega 3 and 6 because they are more of what we get in our diet, but there are other essential fatty acids that we can find in nature that also provide benefits and similarly to other omegas, but it's nice to have a balance. I mean you find them like this in nature instead of just trying to extract one thing in its balanced state like that. This is one of the reasons why it stands out as even being an even better ingredient for skin care because it's got the balance of all of those omegas.
Ben: Okay. Gotcha. So omega 7 would be something and I think another thing you can get in is actually like a macadamia nut or macadamia nut oil which I’m a fan of having around as a really, really good source of like a heat stable type of oil you can cook with. But I hadn't really thought too much about finding it in something like a sea buckthorn, but can you get, by the way do you know, can you get like a sea buckthorn oil or is it only available as like a berry or a juice?
Trevor: Sea buckthorn fruit oil…
Ben: Okay.
Trevor: Is the way it comes and it's another one of those ingredients that I have in my skin care line because these are ingredients that I looked into and wanted to add to my skin care line. So this is one of those ingredients as well, but you can get it as a supplement and they come as capsules.
Ben: Okay. Got it. Got it. Cool. Sea buckthorn, I’m a fan of it. And if you haven’t had a chance to try just like sea buckthorn mixed with vodka before with sea salt and olive oil, I’m telling you, you should try it now.
Trevor: I didn’t know. I’d like that. (laughs)
Ben: Get ready to spin a few dials because you get the antioxidants too. So it’s that whole detox retox phenomenon. Okay. You also mentioned in the book bone broth and everybody, of course, is talking about bone broth and how the collagen and the glycine blah blah blah is good for your skin. I mean we’ve all heard that before, but you also mention something interesting because we make a lot of bone broth here. I know a lot of people like to make their own bone broth. Some people are buying it now from pre-packaged companies I know like Kettle and Fire is one that's out there or Pacific is another one that does like a boxed bone broth, but you mentioned how we should actually look for really like tough meat, tough cuts, speaking of mutton, for a bone broth. Why is that?
Trevor: Yeah, it's gonna have more collagen in it. So if you get more of the tougher meats and parts of the bones and the meat and just throw it all in there, you're gonna get more of the collagen. Save those bits for your bone broth and the tender meat for what you want to chew up and eat and enjoy that differently. So I mean, I think it's a great way for people, people that eat meat, I think bone broth is fantastic way to get collagen and, of course, we want to make sure we’re choosing clean sources of our bones and meat, but I think it can be great.
Ben: Yeah. I think that when you look at a lot of these nasty components that kind of make you turn up your nose, those are the things that tend to be the highest in this collagen like bones, holes, and knuckles and like the tough tough pieces from the skins. And like we’ll occasionally put a rooster down here at the Greenfield house and the meat is not that great, honestly. Rooster meat is tough but, man, when you make that into a bone broth and we'll let it sit in the crock pot sometimes for like 72 hours. You actually get, not only a little more tender meat, but you get really, really good broth because it’s like this tough collagenous type of meat which, when you eat that internally, that kind of returns to the whole premise of your entire book. The skin from the inside out. It’s great for that.
Trevor: Yeah, absolutely.
Ben: Now, you also talk about how we should avoid things that are too alkalinic on the skin. You talked about how water in the correct pH for the skin, you need to be careful with water. Another one that you talk about that should be avoided that I actually see as a recipe, or not as a recipe, as an ingredient in a lot of like skin care recipes it seems is mineral oil. Now, why aren’t you a fan of mineral oil for the skin?
Trevor: Well, mineral oil is used in a lot of personal care products partly because it’s cheap and it does go on smooth, but the problem is that it comes from petroleum, as a petroleum byproduct, and I think most people know that petroleum is also used to make gasoline, and there are some concerns with the purity of mineral oil. Now, manufactures will say that their mineral oil is pure, it's clean, but my concerns are there could still be some contamination of mineral oil. The other thing is why are we using a petroleum byproduct when we've got all these great plants like sea buckthorn fruit oil or pomegranate seed oil, argon fruit oil, and there's so many other great oils that we can get from nature even the coconut oil or olive oil, almond oil. There’s so many other oils that we can use on the skin and in personal care products without using this mineral oil and it's coming from a petroleum byproduct. They use it a lot of times because it's cheap and because people feel like it feels good on their skin, but it's not actually improving the quality of people’s skin either in the way that these other oils can. It's not going to have the same level of nutrients that are going to improve the quality of the skin.
Ben: Yeah. It's one of those things where if you wouldn't, how’s the saying go, “If you wouldn't eat it, you shouldn't smear it all over your body”? And I know it is like a known human, isn't it like classified as human carcinogen or something like that?
Trevor: Well, petroleum is. Now, there are contaminants that are in petroleum that are sometimes found in mineral oil, yes, that are carcinogenic. So yeah, it is definitely. It's so crazy what the skin care manufacturing can get away with in the United States and I don't know if, I know you read my book, but I know people are aware that in other countries like in Europe there have been over a thousand ingredients band in personal care products, but in the United States, the FDA has only band 11 ingredients. And so, they're really leaving it up to consumers to figure out what's safe…
Ben: Because we’re America. We want our guns and our fishing and our hunting licenses and the ability to smear anything on our skin that we want. Actually, don't get me wrong. I'm libertarian. I'd rather like educate people and let them decide what they want to smear on their skin versus making certain products illegal, but I also put up this podcast so people can at least get educated on what kind of things they should or should not be smearing on their skin. So you know, I actually got a really interesting question. This a total rabbit hole, but somebody asked me the other day, they’re like, “Well, Ben, if you recommend putting things like coconut oil or extra virgin olive oil or pineapple or whatever on your skin, do you have to count that as your total number of calories like your caloric intake for the day because you could actually absorb that stuff and wind up burning it as calories?” and I'm curious if your response will be any different than mine, Trevor, but what I told them was that once you smear something on your skin, you get to a certain point where an oil hits like a hydrophobic layer before it actually gets the bloodstream. There’s a whole bunch of hydrophilic components in your skin, and so it's tough for something that actually, for like an oil, to get to the point where it makes its way all the way to your bloodstream and gets absorbed as calories. Is that correct or are we actually gonna gain weight by putting coconut oil on our skin?
Trevor: No, I don't think you're gonna gain weight and it really is an interesting question.
Ben: (laughs) It was.
Trevor: It’s something I haven’t been asked. But I don't think the absorption is going to be to the extent where you would want to count that as part of your diet…
Ben: It's a lot of the smaller toxins, I think, that you need to be a little bit more aware of. That stuff can get absorbed.
Trevor: Yeah. Oils don't get absorbed quite the same way as other ingredients and it really has to do with the other ingredients that are in the products, and I know that manufacturers will say, “Oh, you don't absorb everything in it and you only absorb a certain amount and it's still safe.” but my concern really is that these are products that we're using every day and we’re exposed to toxins in a number of different ways and our air, water, food, as well as our personal care products. We don't have control over this total load of toxins were exposed to, but we do have control over what we put on our bodies. So it's a great place to reduce your overall load of toxins.
Ben: I think that you could write another book though about like maybe like the skin diet…
Trevor: Yes.
Ben: Where somebody goes for a few weeks. Just everything that they eat is through their skin. Pineapples, avocados, coconut oil. Let’s see how that would work out for folks.
Trevor: Been on my list.
Ben: Exactly. Okay. So some other things that you discuss in the book. One is, five natural ingredients for your skin that you can get straight from the kitchen. And you’ve obviously got all sorts of different ingredients or different recipes that you would use these in, but what are your five top things that a lot of people might have laying around in the kitchen right now that they could take and start to make like they're own little like skin healing cream with?
Trevor: Yeah, absolutely. So one is avocados. Avocados are great. They’re rich in vitamins A and E, mono-unsaturated fats. So great for hydrating the skin. Another one is honey. Honey is a natural humectant so it helps hold in the moisture on our skin and it helps with the pH. So it’s a great part of a DIY skin care routine.
Ben: You call that a “humectant”?
Trevor: Yeah, a humectant.
Ben: That’s just something that helps to maintain moisture?
Trevor: Yeah.
Ben: Okay. Cool. So that would be like, for me, during snowboarding season, for example, and I’m getting exposed to a lot of cold temperatures or when I am, for example, in a situation where I’ve got a lot of dry skin from like getting in the water a lot, I could literally just use like a raw honey on my face?
Trevor: You could. Now, it would be, if you used it all by itself and nothing else, it’s gonna be very sticky. So I wouldn't say just use it by itself. I would say use it as an ingredient. You can use it with honey and a few other ingredients I’m gonna mention, but it's great as part of a DIY skin care regimen. Sometimes they have it in skin care products. They’ll contain certain types of honey. Some are more therapeutic than others like a Manuka honey. It's going to be particularly therapeutic. The other thing about honey is that it's got great anti-microbial benefits so naturally helping with things like acne where you’ve got an imbalance in the skin microbiome. It could help curve that P-acne bacteria overgrowth.
Ben: Now, do you have to be careful with something like that that's anti-microbial that you don't kill the good bacteria on your skin?
Trevor: Not really with honey because it seems to kill off the harmful bacteria, but it doesn't kill off the beneficial bacteria.
Ben: Okay. Gotcha. Yeah, that seem to be the case with oregano. I get that question with oregano a lot and that's something I put in my, that's actually how I started making my own skin serum. I used to use a lot of wild oregano oil when I'd have areas where I wanted to like knock out a zit or I used to have this thing where my skin would tan in splotches on my back. It was called tinea versicolor. I had like a fungal infection on my back and it was super embarrassing for me in the summer, and so what I started to do when I take a shower was I'd put a few drops of like wild Mediterranean oregano oil over my shoulders. Let it kind of like drip down my back and I’d rub that in with a loofa and over the summer of doing that, all of a sudden I got rid of this like fungus on my back and I started to tan normally again. And I started wondering are those just like killing all the good bacteria on my body, and so I asked my dad about this, because he's gonna like an expert with some of these oils, and he did some research into it and it turns out that oregano oil seems to have this selective action against cell membranes where it is selectively deleterious to bad bacteria but allows good bacteria to flourish and he even made like an oregano oil flavored yogurt to prove that you could cause good bacteria to still flourish in the presence of like an oregano medium and be able to control a lot of the bad bacteria. So it is interesting how nature is smart to a certain extent in that way.
Trevor: Yeah, and I use oregano a lot internally too to help with just gut dysbiosis issues because of the same types of reasons that it attacks the harmful bacteria and creates more of the balance with the good bacteria.
Ben: Yeah, it's great for that kind of stuff. Small intestine bacterial overgrowth and candida and anything like that. Yeah, you just have to be careful like you gotta get stuff that’s not super concentrated or else you'll burn yourself. That stuff’s pretty caustic. So you have avocados, you have honey. Oats are another one that you talk about.
Trevor: Yeah, and I do want to mention honey. I prefer people to use raw honey.
Ben: Okay.
Trevor: [56:12] ______ pasteurize it. Kills of a lot of the great benefits of it. So yeah, Oats are another one. Oats have great anti-inflammatory and soothing properties for the skin so they’re particularly good for people with irritated skin, eczema, hives, and help healing with those kinds of skin issues.
Ben: Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. Cool. And then you have yogurt and then papaya is another one. You actually have a whole recipe for papaya. Do you actually smear papaya all over your face or what’s your recipe for papaya? Can you walk people through it because it's kind of funny, because a lot of the pictures in your book look like things that I would make in a smoothie but you've got like this three ingredients, I believe it's like a mask, that you make with papaya. Can you go into this one?
Trevor: Yeah, yeah. So some of the ingredients we just talked about. So it’s a tablespoon of papaya, just the flesh, and a tablespoon of organic plain yogurt, and then one teaspoon of ground oats. So the thing about papaya, as I mentioned, the enzymes in it. The papain in there is gonna help with being great as an exfoliant. The yogurt is very soothing and also the thing about yogurt too is that it has a lactic acid in there and also has probiotics which can help with the skin microbiome and the pH of the skin, and then the oatmeal is soothing and helps kind of hold it all together and makes a great mask. I do recommend that people use this in the evening because the papain and the papaya can create some photosynthesis that make people more sensitive to the sun if…
Ben: Oh, interesting.
Trevor: They were to use this and then go right out into the sun. So do it at night as an evening papaya mask. I love that one. I think it's fantastic and, yeah, I mean they’re all things that you probably, people probably already have in their kitchen.
Ben: And you literally just like blend all that together, you put all that together in a food processor and then smear it on your face before you go to bed?
Trevor: Well, yes, and again, you don't leave it on overnight. You just leave it for like five to 10 minutes depending on the sensitivity of your skin. Here's the other thing about papaya is that if it's greener, if the papaya itself is greener, it’s gonna have more enzymes in there. So if you have sensitive or sensitive inflamed skin, it's better to maybe not start with a green papaya. Do a riper one, but if you're really looking to exfoliate then you want to go with a greener one.
Ben: Okay. Gotcha. I didn't know that about papayas, but that's good to know too because if you purchase like the harder, more green papayas in the grocery store and you’re eating them for their digestive enzyme or for their recovery enhancing effects you'd be better served by going with like the slightly harder papaya.
Trevor: Correct. Yeah, a lot of the things that you do internally, you can do externally and that's a lot of what I talk about in the book and we want to get back to that rather than using all these expensive and synthetic products that are out there that are actually just full of toxic ingredients that our body doesn’t need.
Ben: All sorts of tips for the produce aisle. Speaking of the produce aisle, there's another cleanser recipe that I thought was really interesting. And you know I’m always on a look out for super simple things and there's one that you talk about in the book. You call it the coconut milk and grape juice cleanser. Can you go into what that is and why somebody would want to use a coconut milk grape juice cleanser on their skin?
Trevor: Yeah, absolutely. So that is one tablespoon of unsweetened coconut milk, two teaspoons red or black grape juice, and a teaspoon of almond oil. And I think a lot of people think of cleansers as something that needs to be foaming like a bar of soap, but unfortunately a lot of those types of cleansers that foam up, they're actually stripping the skin, they're disrupting that natural pH. And so, instead using oil-based cleansers can be a great way to remove, for women, makeup and then also for everybody for debris and clean the skin without stripping it. And so that's why that's one of my favorite of the cleansers because it’s hydrating while it’s cleansing at the same time.
Ben: Okay. Cool. So a cleanser would be something that would remove dead skin cells and restore pH to the skin and add a little bit of hydration. That’d be like the definition or something like that?
Trevor: Yeah, and then typically when people think of cleansers they’re just thinking about removing stuff. Just removing makeup, removing debris, removing sweat, but cleansing can also, I'm taking a step further like, yes, we want to remove makeup, we want to remove debris and sweat and dirt and all that stuff off the skin, but without stripping the skin. It’s actually an opportunity to also nourish the skin at the same time.
Ben: Awesome. There's all sorts of other stuff in here like your skin nourishing coffee substitute. A bunch of stuff you can eat for your skin. You’ve even got like bison veggie stew, baked apples. All sorts of kind of cool little recipes in here and then, of course, a lot of these things that you can use as cleansers. Like I mentioned, if you have access, it would appear that these would be great ingredients for a smoothie as well. So I kind of like how everything in the book, if you end up effing up the recipe, could still probably just eat it and it tastes pretty good so. Anyways though, for those of you listening in, this book is called “Clean Skin From Within”. I'm gonna link to the stuff that Trevor and I talked about if you just go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/cleanskin. But Trevor, is there anything else that you want to share with folks while I have you on the show?
Trevor: Well, I just want to remind people about the skin quiz. I think it’s a great place to go to find out what are the root causes behind, if you have a skin issue or even if you just want to make sure you're doing everything you can for your skin to have that healthy glow because, like I said, your skin’s giving you messages about your overall health. So it’s good to know what your skin type is because you might be missing out on an opportunity to optimize your health as well as the appearance of your skin.
Ben: Okay. Sweet. I’ll link to the skin quiz too if you guys just go to, again, bengreenfieldfitness.com/cleanskin. I’ll put it all there. Grab this book. It's really, really good and if anything chock full of really tasty looking pictures. So Doctor Cates, thanks for coming on the show.
Trevor: Yeah, thanks for having me. It's great. It’s been fun.
Ben: Alright, folks. So this is Ben Greenfield along with Trevor Cates, signing out from bengreenfieldfitness.com Have a healthy week.
Ever consider grabbing an avocado or papaya from your kitchen and smearing it all over your face?
How about mixing up some pineapple and green algae to dab on your skin?
Or how about this…did you know the first signs of nutritional deficiencies actually show up on the skin?
My guest on today's show, Dr. Trevor Cates, just wrote a fantastic book called “Clean Skin from Within: The Spa Doctor's Two-Week Program to Glowing, Naturally Youthful Skin“. In it, she presents guidelines and recipes to transform your skin from the inside out. She explains the “why” of what’s happening, and how you can remedy problems. She opens by showing how to identify your skin type to reach the root cause of problems. From there you’ll learn how to create nourishing foods to create a clean mind, clear skin, and healthy body. Collagen-boosting bone broths, antioxidant-rich salads, and delicious smoothies are just a few things on the menu. You’ll also be able to whip up all-natural cleansers, toners, exfoliants, and masks…
…and get new skin within two weeks flat.
Dr. Cates is a nationally recognized naturopathic doctor. She is also known, as “The Spa Dr.” and was the first woman licensed as a naturopathic doctor in the state of California, appointed by former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to California’s Bureau of Naturopathic Medicine Advisory Council. She has worked with world-renown spas and sees patients in her private practice in Park City, Utah with a focus on graceful aging and glowing skin. She has been featured on The Doctors, Extra, First for Women, Mind Body Green and is host of THE SPA DR. Podcast. Dr. Cates believes the key to healthy skin is inner and outer nourishment with non-toxic ingredients.
During our discussion, you'll discover:
-Why it was skin issues that first got Ben and his wife to begin eating healthy…[11:50]
-Why some of the first signs of nutritional deficiencies can show up in our skin…[16:10]
-The five different skin types, and how to figure out which one you are…[19:40]
-The two favorite natural ingredients for the skin that Trevor talks about in her book…[25:13]
-Why water is not the correct pH for the skin and why you want something more acidic on your skin…[30:20]
-How digestive enzymes from things like pineapple can be used to help turn over dead skin cells more quickly…[33:20]
-What sea buckthorn does for your skin, where you get it, and why the “omega-7” in it is so important…[41:25]
-How to ensure that your bone broth is high in collagen…[44:30]
-Why mineral oil is something that should be avoided…[46:30]
-The five natural ingredients for your skin that you can get straight from the kitchen…[52:00]
-Why Trevor smears papaya all over her face, and an easy recipe with papaya, oats and yogurts that can make your face and skin look amazing…[56:55]
-A simple coconut milk grape juice cleanser recipe you make with just three ingredients…[59:40]
-And much more…
Resources from this episode:
–Clean Skin from Within: The Spa Doctor's Two-Week Program to Glowing, Naturally Youthful Skin
–The Greenfield Anti-Aging Skin Serum
–Dr. Loren Cordain's Dietary Cure For Acne
–Dr. Trevor Cates full line of skin care products