Tune in as Dr. Trevor Cates (aka the "Spa Dr.") shares how your skin is the first indicator to how healthy you truly are.
Learn the secrets to glowing skin and what dermatologists should be telling you, but aren't. She also shares how you can have healthy, glowing skin... no matter what your age.
Dr. Trevor Cates was the first woman licensed as a naturopathic doctor in the state of California and was appointed by former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to California’s Bureau of Naturopathic Medicine Advisory Council. Also known as “The Spa Dr.,” Dr. Cates sees patients at world-renowned spas and in her Park City, Utah, private practice with a focus on anti-aging, hormone balance and glowing skin. She has a regular iTunes podcast called THE SPA DR: Secrets to Smart, Sexy and Strong and an upcoming Glowing Skin Summit (April 27 – May 4, 2015). www.DrTrevorCates.com
RadioMD Presents: Wellness for Life Radio | Original Air Date: April 24, 2015
Host: Susanne Bennett, DC
Guest: Trevor Cates, ND
You're listening to RadioMD. She's a chiropractic, holistic physician, best-selling author, international speaker, entrepreneur, and talk show host. She's Dr. Susanne Bennett. It's time now for Wellness for Life Radio. Here's Dr. Susanne.
SUSANNE: Today’s Wellness for Life expert guest is the first woman who was licensed as a naturopathic Doctor in the state of California. She’s also known as “The Spa Doctor”. She’s here to share with you how to keep your skin glowing while into your ageing years. Please welcome Dr. Trevor Cates. Doc, how ya doin’?
DR. CATES: Good Dr. Susanne! How are you? It’s great to be here.
SUSANNE: Very good. Aw thank you so much. Now why is our skin such a great indicator of our overall health and wellness?
DR. CATES: Well, whenever we have signs that our skin is anything less than glowing, so we have dry skin, oily skin, or we have problems like acne, rosacea, eczema, any of those kinds of things it’s a sign that something is going on in the body and it’s a great opportunity to take a look at that and figure out how you can restore balance from within so that you can have glowing skin and vibrant health.
SUSANNE: Well, you know, you’re so right in that we’ve got to look inside. I always talk about the gut we’ve got to first go there what’s going on in the gut and all that. And when you think about it, and a lot of these dermatologists which I think are so important in helping us with skin care, but they really don’t tell us the truth about the depths of why skin health is so important and you have to look at everything else. Isn’t that correct?
DR. CATES: Yes, you know, most dermatologists don’t look at what I was just talking about. Skin is a reflection of what is happening inside the body. They look at these symptoms as something that needs to be suppressed, so they’re going to recommend a cream or an antibiotic or a steroid to suppress the symptoms but the problem is we’re not addressing the underlying cause. So, if we just suppress those symptoms on the outside without addressing what the underlying cause is, I’ve seen that these problems can show up in even more serious ways. So, I’ve seen patients with acne and eczema, for example, who’ve put on different topical treatments and then later on develop problems like arthritis or asthma because there’s inflammation and imbalances like you were talking about the gut microbiome and if those aren’t being addressed then it’s just going to show up some other way.
SUSANNE: That’s right. I totally get that. Yes.
DR. CATES: And, you know what? These medications aren’t fixing the problem and, in fact, some of these medications, these prescription medications that people are typically given, can actually make the problem worse. So, in addition to the gut microbiome, we have skin microbiome. So, we have this delicate balance of microorganisms that live on our skin and protect our skin from imbalances and help keep us looking young and youthful looking, as we get older. But when we put these products, as well as our common personal care products, on our skin it disrupts that balance and creates more problems and then even some of these products some of these personal care products that we commonly use can actually disrupt our hormones and some are even carcinogenic.
SUSANNE: Oh, I totally agree with you on that. In my book, The 7-day Allergy Makeover, I talk a lot about chemicals that you’ve got to watch out that you apply onto your body and I know you are a strong believer in that as well. What are your top tips for glowing skin and vibrant health?
DR. CATES: Well, I would say the number one is a lot of what you and I were just talking about is reducing your toxin exposures and one of the ways we are exposed to toxins regularly is our personal care products. On average we use about 9 personal care products a day, so this exposes us to 126 unique ingredients and, unfortunately, the FDA does not regulate our skin care products very well. And so, while the United States has only rejected, the FDA has only rejected 11 ingredients as unsafe in our personal care products, Europe, for example, has banned hundreds, so we’re way behind other countries on these things. So, the first thing is look at your personal care products and look for things like parabens, thalates, artificial fragrances, oxybenzone-- it’s in almost all sunscreens. Because these ingredients can be, like I said, have hormone-disrupting effects. We don’t want to throw off our hormones, especially if we’re getting older and our hormones are already going out of whack and going crazy as we get older. When we’re exposed to more of these in personal care products, it just creates more problems, so that would be one thing. Another thing is to make sure you’re getting great nutrients in the foods that you’re eating and then also supplementing with certain nutrients if you need that. You know, key nutrients, I would say, two of the top ones are omega-3’s and antioxidants. So, making sure that you’re getting in those good high quality oils like fish, nuts and seeds as well as colorful fruits and vegetables. Then another thing is to enhance your digestion--because our digestion is so important for our skin. And I know you talked about this, so whether you need digestive support, you have to kind of look at that. You have constipation, diarrhea, bloating any of those kinds of symptoms then you want to look at digestive enzymes, probiotics, or fermented foods those kinds of things can help support your digestion.
SUSANNE: I totally agree on that. Yes what else?
DR. CATES: Yes, so, and then, related to that is detoxification so not only do we want to be careful what we’re exposed to in our environment: in our air, our water, our food, our personal care products, and we want to make sure we’re digesting well, we want to make sure we’re detoxifying anything that we’re exposed to. Because we’re exposed to these toxins on a regular basis, we want to make sure that our liver is working well; that our digestive system is working well, our kidneys, all that is helping us eliminate. So, some of the things we can do is one of the big things is eating cruciferous vegetables helps with daily detoxification, so it helps enhance detoxification pathways. So things like broccoli, cabbage, those kinds of vegetables are great. They also help if you really look at your digestion and that balance and detoxification that’s going to address the underlying inflammation that a lot of people have that leads to skin problems. So, those are a few things and I could keep going on. There are two more that I want to mention with your audience. The next one is really important and that’s sugar. Our exposure to sugar really makes an impact on our skin because when we have higher blood sugar, glucose binds to our skin’s collagen and elastin and damages it. So, it causes premature aging so we want to be careful about our sugar intake and sugar is hidden in so many places so we just really want to be careful. And then, the last one is looking at our hormones because this is particularly important as we get older because our hormones change and that can impact our skin. For example, when people have hypothyroidism, low thyroid function, it can cause dry skin and when women have something called PCOS. It can lead to acne. So, we want to make sure that we’re looking at our hormones. If we have any problems, we want to balance those.
SUSANNE: That’s excellent. You know everything that you just talked about, I know that it’s going to also be shared by 35 of the top wellness, nutrition, hormone and skin expert Docs on your Glowing Skin Summit. This is a once, first time ever, online free summit that starts April 27th to May 4th. Can you please tell us a bit about that before you go?
DR. CATES: Yes. It’s The Glowing Skin Summit. Glowingskinsummit.com is where people go. Glowingskinsummit.com to register and sign-up and, yes, April 27th-May 4th with amazing 35 leading experts in wellness, nutrition, hormones, and skin sharing their top tips. It’s all free and online next week. There’s also if people can’t join in at that time, there is an opportunity to download that as well. Download the entire summit so people can just check that out at glowingskinsummit.com.
SUSANNE: That’s really easy. Gosh, there’s so much to learn! Particularly in this summit, you’re going to learn about not only the aesthetic medicine but really getting to the root of what’s going on internally. And there’s 35 docs that are just going to share their best strategies on how to help you with glowing skin and vibrant health. Thanks so much Dr. Cates thank you so much for being here. Again glowingskinsummit.com is where you go to sign-up it’s a free online summit everyone!
Until then, okay this is Dr. Susanne Bennett sharing my natural strategies for ultimate health and wellness right here on RadioMD. Stay well everyone I’ll see you at The Glowing Skin Summit.