#105 Nutrients for Skin Health with Chris Masterjohn

What nutrients help make gorgeous skin? 

In this week's episode of the Less Stressed Life Podcast, I got the chance to talk to "the guy" for vitamins and minerals, Chris Masterjohn, Ph.D., about the different nutrient deficiencies related to skin issues and what nutrients support skin integrity.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

• [14:50] Skin manifestations and relief
• [32:47] Four nutrient deficiencies with similar skin manifestations
• [40:52] Vitamin A plant-based & animal-based food sources
• [47:01] Tips on Molybdenum intake

Mentioned in this episode:

• Vitamins and Minerals 101: How to Get the Nutrients You Need on Any Diet by Dr. Chris Masterjohn
• Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Dr. Weston Price 
• Primal Defense Ultra by Garden of Life 
• Dexpanthenol cream 

Chris Materjohn earned his Ph.D. in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Connecticut in the summer of 2012. He served as a postdoctoral research associate in the Comparative Biosciences department of the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. From August 2014 to December 2016, he served as Assistant Professor of Health and Nutrition Sciences at Brooklyn College, part of the City University of New York. He decided to leave academia and pursue entrepreneurship in the Fall of 2016. In 2017, he's been conducting independent research, consulting, working on information products, collaborating on information and technology products, and producing tons of free content to help people gain better health. His mission is to grapple with complex science and translates it into practical principles that each of us can use to better support our health.

Thank you, Manitoba Milling Flaxseed for sponsoring today’s episode. You can find Manitoba Milled Flaxseeds and milk at some large retailers or get 25% off your first order with the codes on my SHOP page. 

This is the third episode of SKIN-month and I'm happy to share with you my book The Eczema Relief Diet & Cookbook is shipping April 14th and is available for pre-order on Amazon.

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Transcript

spk_0:   0:00
There are several things that are really bad for fungal infections, and they are darkness moistness, and the absolute worst is sweaty nous. So if you wash your skin and then you keep it really dry, that's generally going to improve something that's fungal in nature.

spk_1:   0:17
Welcome to the less stressed life podcast, where our only priority is providing those ah ha moments toe up level your life, health and happiness. Your host, Integrative dietitian nutritionist Krista Bigler, helps health conscious women reduce the stress and confusion around food, fatigue, digestive and skin issues at less stress. Patrician dot com Now onto the show You may not know this, but I live in farm country, and one of my favorite sites are the beautiful blue fields of flax when they flower in the summer. High amounts of daily flax seed are also one of the most common food recommendations. I make two women working through heavy periods or hormone issues, skin problems, high cholesterol or even as a quick option to move stagnant digestion. It's not always easy getting in multiple tablespoons of flax each day unless you have a really great source of flax. My favorite is from the Pizzi family in Manitoba who pioneered flack sourcing in the food, beverage and pet food industry over the last few decades. They're flacks is head and shoulders above any other flax I've used and tasted in my kitchen for a few unique reasons. First, they sliced the whole seed so there is no waste, and you get the nutrition from the entire plant in both their Milt flax seed and their flax milk. This gives it the freshest, fluffiest texture. Second, they remove any disease and damage seeds that don't fit their quality standards. So the whole batch doesn't get that rancid smell or taste like some other flags. Third, they gently he treat each batch for food safety and to give the flax a smooth, slightly roasted flavor. And finally, they care for their soil through crop rotation to grow healthy flax for years to come. Thank you for sponsoring today's episode. Manitoba Milling Flax seed. You confined Manitoba milk, flax seed and milk at some large retailers, or get 25% off online, using the code 25 Krista at Amazon or Manitoba flax dot com. For the most up to date links and discount codes for all products mentioned on the show. You can always go to christa Bigler dot com forward slash shop Okay, today on the less stress like we have Dr Chris Master John, who is Really If you don't know Dr Chris Master John he is sort of like the guy for vitamins and minerals. So he earned his nutritional sciences degree from the University of Connecticut and Summer of 2012. For a couple of years, he served as a post doc researcher, so CIA in Comparative Biosciences Department of the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champagne. From August 2014 to 2016 he served as assistant professor of health in nutrition sciences at Brooklyn College, part of the City University of New York. He decided to leave academia and pursue entrepreneurship. In the fall of 2016. In 2017 he's been conducting independent research, consulting, working on products, collaborating or information or technology products and producing tons of free content to help people gain better health. His mission is to grapple with conflict science and translated into practical principles that each of us can use to better support our health, which I love that last line so much. Welcome, Chris.

spk_0:   3:17
Thank you so much. It's good to be here.

spk_1:   3:18
Yes. So I had a professional crush on Chris's work when I first read his, which we're not talking a ton about today. There's a lot of health professionals that listen to this. And so he's got this lovely micronutrient cheat sheet. I mean, that any nerd would enjoy, but it kind of goes through. I actually have used it as a resource for a lot of things, but it goes through every nutrient and sources, and it's really clearly a labor of love. And it's been really awesome stuff. I've enjoyed him since then, and then Chris and I were both on an exam, a summit recently and did a great job talking about nutrients related to skin issues. And so we want to chat about that. But first we talked about your professional history a little bit. You gave us a nice little timeline in the bio, but let's talk about how you actually became a vitamins and minerals Kik because it's not like there's a lot of you around. So tell me about what happened and like why you decided to do exactly what you're doing and spread the information you're spreading.

spk_0:   4:11
Yeah, Going back into my teenage years, big influence was the way that I saw my mom worked through her own condition of fibromyalgia. She went on a quite long health journey through various alternative healing modalities. And I just saw completely transformed what was chronic pain that was keeping her and me up every night into, uh, largely pain free life. So I was probably like, 14 or 15 when I really started getting interested in health and nutrition. But I wouldn't say I was vitamins and minerals geek at that time at all, Really. I experimented with a number of diets the zone diet that I became a vegetarian and then a vegan. And then, while I was a vegan, I did the soy zone diet, which is a vegan zone diet, and that whole journey was not all it was cracked up to be. I thought that I'd get healthier while I was a vegan, while I was also saving the environment and the animals, and I actually got really unhealthy. So there were anxiety disorders that were kind of modest nuisances to me, leading up to that point that really got to the point where they were interfering with my life whereas like, afraid to eat most of my food I was just Basically, life was getting unlivable at that point, and I also went to the dentist and found that I needed to root canals and head over a dozen cavities. So basically, my mental and physical health, especially my teeth and my anxiety or my control of my anxiety, just basically fell apart while I was a vegan. And then I encountered the work of Western Price on dhe lesson. Price was a pioneer of nutritional Anthropologie who studied the traditional diets as they existed in parts of the world that were untouched by modern civilization. So hunter gatherer tribes, traditional agricultural us you'd not industrialized Hey, basically traveled all over the world looking at these traditional diets and then found what happened. Those people, when they transitioned into what he called the displacing foods of modern commerce white flour, white sugar can good syrups and gems and white rice, things like that that were imported into these places and basically consistently, people went from very healthy in all aspects. His book was called nutrition and physical degeneration. Basically, all the diseases that dominate modern society became common, and he was particularly interested in teeth because his background was dental research. And so he especially documented was how these people were basically free from tooth decay while they were eating their traditional diets, even though most of them didn't really have dental hygiene practices. And then they just said rampant do decay when they were eating modern diets. And he emphasized the importance of nutrients, and especially on fat soluble vitamins in protecting against tooth decay. So my interest at this time is just that I want to fix my teeth. That's why I started reading the book. But as I started implementing the principles that I learned from Western price around nutrient dense animal foods, especially organ meats and shellfish. In addition, Thio just regular animal foods like meat and eggs and dairy. As I started implementing these principles, I also saw my mental health just completely revolutionised like I just feel like a completely new person. My anxiety disorders basically just disappeared. It was a complete surprise to me. I I didn't expect that I wasn't trying to do that but I felt like my life had turned around so powerfully that I had to pay it forward. And so that was kind of like the key turning point in why I got interested in nutrition to the degree I am, I guess, in terms of like why I became a vitamins and minerals geek. You know, when I became vegan, I didn't really know much about vitamins and minerals. I just had this very vague sense that, like vitamins or something that you got from vegetables and protein was something that you got from meat and calcium was something that you got from milk. And according to the vegan literature, we don't need as much protein as they say we do it. The only calcium, as they say we do, we'll go. Just get all our vitamins from vegetables except be 12. That was kind of like my very primitive understanding of nutrients. And so when I was understanding the value of nutrient dense animal foods through the work of Western Price, I was really thinking about vitamins and minerals in ways that I never had before. Like actually, these shellfish are way higher in zinc and copper than you know any of the other foods are meeting. Actually, this liver his way higher and vitamin A than any of the other fruits and a meeting. And so starting to think about why those foods were so important and kind of tease out what had happened to me and what I could learn from it to help other people is really what turned me into the vitamins and minerals geek that I am today.

spk_1:   9:02
I love that you brought up prices research because he and his friends were the first people when you mentioned your teeth, so and I didn't know you were going there, so that's great. There's actually a episode around the time of this area, and I don't know exactly when, but it's a dentist where we talked quite a bit and he talks about dental stress, and I just think I actually, like have a huge interest in dental stress and its relationship. I think what's going on your mouth is a window to the inside of your body. So anyway, I just think it's cool that that's your story. I have a question. I think we could talk a lot about it, actually be a really fun conversation to talk about vegan to traditional diet. Transition was your digestive system challenge when you started to make those changes? Because that's not necessarily a super easy transition for someone to make jump from vegan thio traditional ancestral dia.

spk_0:   9:45
I don't think so. I think my digestive system was challenged by being vegan. I actually had a lot of discomfort when I was a vegan, but I think that's just because I was eating plant foods that are more difficult to digest, like most un digestible things air found in plants. And so I think probably I had an improvement in my microbiome. That was just a complete accident when I shifted to more animal foods.

spk_1:   10:09
I'm sure you were very intrigued by your mental health change. Did you conclude that there was some very specific If you would pull out like, what do you think were the main changes? Do you think it was a fat soluble nutrients? I'm just trying to decide. What do you think that the most?

spk_0:   10:27
Yeah. I mean, I could spend an hour or two speculating, but I know our time is limited here, So what I'll say is I still don't know, and it's still kind of a mystery to me and first of all, say I didn't go into great detail here, but the degree of mental degeneration that I had at that point was pretty severe, and my memory is also very poor. From that time period. I was vegan for about a year, and I was talking to my mom about a year ago about this, and she told me that she brought me into the emergency room because I demanded it for panic attacks that I was having, like, six or seven times. And on Lee through talking to her about it. Did I even remember, like one example of that? But I still don't remember going in repeated times. So like I know two things. One is that vegetarianism and veganism are both consistently in the literature associated with an increased risk of psychiatric disorders, including anxiety, depression and obsessive compulsive disorder. And yet I think I'm very unique in the severity of my response to veganism. I think it's the majority of people do not develop mental disorders as a result of being vegetarian or vegan who choose to do that. Although the little data that we have is that around 80% of people who go vegetarian or vegan go back. So vegetarians and vegans are also very self selected that people that are likely to do well with that or the people who stay on long term. So who knows if you stop those 80% from going back to eating meat? Who knows what would happen to their mental health? But I think it's very clear that very few people, as a result of going vegan, have the degree of mental harm that I suffered. So I think that I probably have a genetic defect in synthesizing something that is found in animal foods and is very rich in organ meats but is not found in plant foods and is not in any of the vitamin supplements that I was taking while I was Regan and that I just wasn't eating it when I was vegan and then all of a sudden I was eating lots of it when I was eating a Western price inspired diet that was had a pound of buffalo liver every week and so on. So I mean, and to this day I always feel better when I'm eating organ meats than what I'm not even though I don't particularly like organ meats. And I honestly hate the taste of liver. I might go like every once in a while. I might go like six months or a year without eating liver, because I just really don't like it and nothing really bad happens to me. But I just clearly overwhelmingly feel better when I'm eating liver regularly, so I don't know what it is. I do know that my cholesterol has always run low, and my cholesterol was extremely low when I was vegan. And I do seem to you know, other experiences suggested to me that things that lower my cholesterol also cause neurological problems for me. So that's one possibility. But I haven't identified any genetic reason for my low cholesterol, But that would offer a pretty simple explanation because I actually have data on that, and there is zero cholesterol and vegan diets, and they're zero cholesterol in any vitamin supplements, so actually it actually fits perfectly, but I'm not ready to single that out. I think it could be other things like lip OIC acid or coenzyme ares, something like that, too.

spk_1:   13:55
Yeah, for everyone who's listening. Cholesterol is an animal based few. So when peanut butter says cholesterol free, that's a laughing. That's a joke because there's no cholesterol. Plano. That's

spk_0:   14:05
like low carb eggs. But to be fair, I've also seen cholesterol free water.

spk_1:   14:10
Oh my gosh. Give me a break, anyway. Um, yeah, anyway. But cholesterol's like a backbone to hormone synthesis, essentially, or like I mean, there's a lot of pieces there. I mean, there's people who make a living talking about the importance of fat in the brain. So anyway, that's a fun conversation to go down. Maybe another day. Uh, let's talk about you had a few times where you had some skin manifestations pop up. Tell us a little bit about that, because I know yourself guinea pig a little bit. You've learned a lot through that experience for what I gather. And so I believe each time you said, Hey, I figured out that I relieved my skin rash from this thing. Will you tell us a little bit about those experiences?

spk_0:   14:49
Yeah, So I have a recurring problem with what I call X Emma and generally is, ah, alternates it at this point between zero and one on a scale of 0 to 10 I guess, and, you know, occasionally flares up. But when it started, it just ah, voraciously took over my body, like from the tips of my fingers, my shoulders on both arms, down the left side of my torso and down the tops of both my thighs. I tried all kinds of things, took me a year to arrive at something that worked, and what ultimately worked was a probiotic called primal defense. It's made by Garden of Life, the current formula. It was reformulated after I used it, and now I believe primal defense Ultra is the original formulation that I had used and the difference between primal defense ultra and the regular primal defenses. The ultra contains sacrifices Belardi, which is a yeast, and the regular formula does not. It only contains soil bacteria, but anyway, within a couple weeks it was 80% gone, and within a couple of months it was completely gone. But then, for a while it would come back as little patches of dry, itchy skin on my wrist every once in a while, and then at some point, did it shifted to coming back. Now it never comes back on my wrists. If it comes back now, it comes back on my fingers.

spk_1:   16:15
What's it look like on your fingers? And what did it look like when it was kind of more systemic and ask The Lord helped

spk_0:   16:20
when it was at its worst, it was very red, and it would puss to like when I would work out. It would this especially. If you want more detail, you'll have to ask more specific questions about what it looked like.

spk_1:   16:32
No, that's fine. I was wondering was read mein kind of angry, sort of systemically coup was all over. It was more dry, patchy red, angry or not read. Sounds like it would be red.

spk_0:   16:42
It was red and angry. It was more patchy. Less Dottie.

spk_1:   16:49
Okay, got it. Not round circles either, right? No Cool. Yeah. So it was kind of a gut thing, Right? Because s polarity really helps. We've got little fungal imbalance or that, but then it moved to your fingers. What it looked like on your fingers. Is it like puss jewels Or like, little sacks? You said it still pops up a little bit on your fingers sometimes.

spk_0:   17:06
Yeah, a little bit. I'm not sure it's like when it's just creeping up a little bit. It's not that angry. And it's like Apache, red and dry.

spk_1:   17:16
When did it? If

spk_0:   17:17
it is so interestingly, it actually started. Like after I transitioned to a Western price inspired diet as all those other things that were much more severe resolved. That's when my skin flared up. Interestingly enough, yeah, to go back to your point. I mean, maybe that does represent my digestive system. Having trouble adjusting to that diet

spk_1:   17:39
was shifting. Have it

spk_0:   17:41
but an experience that as digestive upset

spk_1:   17:43
isn't that annoying When there's got issues and there's no digestive, I really prefer when skin correlates a digestive stuff. So I don't have to say this is good, but it doesn't necessarily mean it is right. But a lot of nutrient things are related to gut, right, because that's how we're gonna digest things properly, right? So anyway, I'll let you see. Yeah, that's true. Well, I just want to say

spk_0:   18:01
that I don't actually think that I have one skin condition. I think I have, like at least two and maybe three or four and that they tend to be co morbid. So I think it's very clear that when this gets really angry, it's fungal and, in fact, some time years leader. I also had a scalp condition that where my scalp was just scaling really, really bad and has got worse and worse. It started to cross the line into my forehead, and I noticed at that time that I've been kind of lax on my liver and cod liver oil intake. And my theory was that I was running deficient in vitamin A, so I just started getting 100,000. I you a vitamin a per day for a few weeks and then, like, leveled it off to 30,000 I you for a few months, and the condition almost completely disappeared in response to that. But so, like two years ago, I developed what was probably for the first time in that entire history, like the first event was probably 15 years ago, almost or maybe 13 or 14 years ago. And so two years ago I developed a condition that was like voraciously taking over my body that was competitive with that first time, and I went in to see a dermatologist, and we were both convinced it was a fungal infection on it responded really well to turbine if in which is an anti fungal, which also caused its own set of problems. It's a completely different story, but it worked very well against it. So the thing is like the reason that I believe it's not one thing. So there's like a component of it that I believe is more what I associate with classical Maxima, which I associate with a defect in the skin barrier where the skin dries because the water is evaporating, which makes the skin in turn more vulnerable to secondary problems such as infection by otherwise relatively normal components of the skin. Microbiome and that component of it is very sensitive to soap because the entire purpose of soap is to wash away lipids in sync water. There's no other purpose to soap, right, And so if the skin barrier is based in lipids, and if there's disruption to the lipids in your skin, they will wash out into the sink water when you wash your hands with soap or in the shower or whatever.

spk_1:   20:25
One of think this either you have exam on your hand, especially because, like, this becomes the vein of your existence. Like every day when you're trying to wash your hands. I don't have to mentioned that like it becomes. Really? Yeah. I

spk_0:   20:36
mean, I'm pretty sure that the main reason that I developed X m around my hands and never on my face is because I've literally never washed my face with soap in my entire life. And I've washed my hands with soap, like probably maybe millions of times, if not certainly out, tens of thousands and it probably tens or hundreds of thousands on anyway. And so in that classical ex Emma's situation, I know that you could subtype the exit my much better than her act. Actually, I can't subtype it. Also, I know that you could, I'm sure critique what I'm calling classical ex Emma. But anyway, in that situation, washing the skin with soap will generally cause a much more severe defect in the skin barrier for about 90 minutes. And in that 90 minute window, you're extremely vulnerable to bacteria seeping in, especially staphylococcus aureus. Those bacteria on the surface of the skin are not harmful, but when they passed the skin barrier. That's when they really cause Harmon. So then they drive inflammation, and then that sort of aggravates everything. And so when my skin is like that, the best response is to avoid unnecessary use of soap and then use something like shea butter that is lipid based to kind of coat the area that I washed with soap when I needed thio. And I find that that to be very effective. By contrast, a fungal infection generally will respond very well to soap if you dry the skin off after, right.

spk_1:   21:58
So, like great point. Because shoulders and above there is a fungus that over grows typically called malice easy A. And so actually, we think most of the time dandruff E type stuff or scaling is on. A scalp is usually fungal. But, like Mayo Clinic has used high doses of vitamin A to correct different skin stuff. So it helps repair like we're not really sure. I'm only

spk_0:   22:17
wait a second Vitamin. A deficiency causes fungal infections.

spk_1:   22:22
Oh, well, there we go. What we should get into that like this is fun. Sorry I interrupted you. I'll let you finish what you were saying, Oh

spk_0:   22:28
oh, that's okay. So in the case of a fungal infection, there are several things that are really bad for fungal infections, and they are darkness moistness, and the absolute worst is sweaty nous. So if you wash your skin and then you keep it really dry, that's generally going to improve something that's fungal in nature, where, as that might be devastating to ex Emma that's driven just by a defect in the skin barrier.

spk_1:   22:55
Just don't say like women. If they have scalp issues and they would wash their hair and then go to bed with it wet, it will drive it crazy like it needs to be dry.

spk_0:   23:05
Yeah, that's why I emphasized that so and also like The worst thing is for to be moist. But if you're going to compare moist with water compared to moist with sweat, the sweat is like orders of magnitude. Worse because sweat is full of buffers that facilitate microbial growth. So, like, I'm quite sure that if you took a cup of sweat of human sweat and you took a cup of water and you left them like on the table and just walked away for a couple weeks like I think you would get much more microbial growth in the sweat than you would get in the water. But that's also true, like if you just took some of the components of sweat like I used

spk_1:   23:44
to work straight,

spk_0:   23:46
not just waste but minerals. I used to work in a laboratory and we had solutions of things just like phosphate buffers for our machines. And we had to like change them regularly because just visible microbial growth would start growing in the thing if you left it there for a week. Whereas that would not happen with water and it's because, like phosphate buffers, for example, they facilitate microbial growth much better. So anyway, the thing that I know was spangle in origin that responded very well to anti fungal Tze was It started on the backs of my knees and I was doing CrossFit and Olympic lifting classes at the time and on the backs of my knees. It was very much driven by the fact that I was sweating in the backs of my knees, doing squats and things like that, and when it was start like at first it was just like a little bit of itchiness and, you know, it was controllable. Like if you work out, you sweat and then you take a shower soon after and you dry off and you're like using performance underwear and stuff like that, like things are generally not gonna get that bad. But if you have a fungal infection that is getting pretty bad, like it got to the point where even just like seconds of sweat would make it worse. And so you know, I got the point right? Couldn't work out anymore at that point. But it's like confusing because my axe Emma was also acting up in my fingers, and that also became a point of fungal growth. So I think it's just that, like, I just think it's actually multiple problems that are co morbid, because if you have a tendency to fungal overgrowth and you also have a defect in the skin barrier, well, you know what's easier to infect, like healthy skin or a defective skin barrier, right? So I think it's just like, you know, if you just have X Emma, it probably is infected by whatever's in your skin, but if you also have a fungal infection that's over growing. It will probably get infected by that, too. At some point, you're not gonna be able to tell the difference between them because they're like facilitating each other. But what's interesting to me is you mentioned the mile clinic using vitamin A. I didn't know that. But

spk_1:   25:50
I only know that because I know it. I know it. It was on hyper doses of vitamin A for skin is

spk_0:   25:55
well, I actually couldn't clear this without vitamin A. So the dermatologist gave me to Ben if in which Islamic cell and the dose was too low. But she wouldn't give me a higher dose. Like I looked up the time that it takes to clear this stuff from the blood, and it corresponded perfectly with the noticeable effect in the skin, like I would take it. And then, after a little while, my skin, we get dramatically better. And then right along the course of when it should peek in my blood, and when it should start getting cleared, my skin would get voraciously worse on. I just felt like I was

spk_1:   26:27
fine, period. Remember,

spk_0:   26:28
it's about 1/2 a day, so I spent half the day with my skin getting better and half the day with my skin getting worse. It was getting a tiny bit better each day, but I basically felt like I was spending half the day. Just I couldn't wait to take the turbine if in the next day. But the real problem was that there were little things that could ruin my progress on it. So, like I started trying out different vitamin supplements and stuff like that and some of the B vitamins made it dramatically worse. And people were talking about potato starch being good for the Microbiome. So I was like, Let me try some potato starch and I didn't mean it dramatically Worse

spk_1:   27:01
makes sense when there's a fungal in balance when you take a pre biotic too soon. So I just wanna mention that as well.

spk_0:   27:08
So we just like I want to finish this out with the vitamin A thing. So because of that, I just completely stopped taking any nutrient supplements. I was just scared to death that I was gonna take something worse on because of being paranoid about that. I think I caused some other problems. Long term. I actually got a different doctor to extend the dose from two weeks to six weeks because the dermatologist wouldn't. And after that, all that did was get it to a point that was, like, manageable instead of like voraciously trying to take over my body. It was just kind of sitting there. I was not able to get rid of it until I basically implemented three things. One was I started supplementing with vitamin A 10,000 I you a day a second was I started drinking. Ah, half a shot of vodka a day on the theory that this would increase the activation of vitamin A for reasons that I own Won't explain unless you want me to.

spk_1:   27:57
I think you're gonna have to explain. And

spk_0:   28:00
well, okay, so ethanol, the alcohol that you get drunk from and vitamin a share many of the same enzymes in their metabolism. And if you drink alcohol, your body makes more of that enzyme to try to clear the alcohol on DDE. In doing so, that ends. I'm also happens to activate vitamin A. So, like you

spk_1:   28:18
can actually do it there. Chris, what's that was against the move. I'm gonna try, huh?

spk_0:   28:24
it was 1/2 a drink a day.

spk_1:   28:25
Oh, yeah,

spk_0:   28:25
I clearly like through experimentation, I found that one drink a day. I started to lose the benefit, and if I had would have three or four drinks, it would completely destroy any progress that I had. So it was very much a low dose like sub. Yeah, it's therapeutic,

spk_1:   28:42
it therapeutic.

spk_0:   28:46
No one goes out for drinks and has half a shot

spk_1:   28:49
on. It's like so

spk_0:   28:53
it's very it was medical dose vodka. So anyway, so there was that. And then I started going tanning. And so photo therapy, I think, is ah, 70% of X and my response Very well. The photo therapy, but also, you know, fun guy. It generally are destroyed by ultraviolet light. So it was really those three things that kind of rounded out everything.

spk_1:   29:14
I love that you talked about the extent you know, you keep saying something that I want. Thio emphasizes that examine. It typically isn't one. There might be like a priority piece, but there's usually a few things in The annoying part is that there is an internal and external part, so traditionally we think of eczema in a traditional sense, as you were saying, as kind of being this staff arias overgrowth on the scanner. We see that as a key component in a lot of eggs, Emma. But sometimes it's something else on the inside, like some people have skin manifestations for fatty acid deficiencies. Right? And Chris is over here, like really dialing into fungus in a way that's a little different than some people. I mean, I'm a big fan of Manta fumbles, for sure, but he's the dialling into, and no one has ever said I had an ounce of vodka to help clear a fungal infection, So this is kind of fun. So I think we also need to talk about dosages of vitamin A because but someone didn't know you did mention taking 100,000 I use of Vitamin A, which is a buttload that is a lot of vitamin A. I mean 10,000. I used to my knowledge, when the Mayo Clinic is supplementing in the thousands of vitamin A, they're checking liver end times for just in the thousands, you know, and you're over. That's

spk_0:   30:18
that's completely paranoid and doesn't make any sense, so I should

spk_1:   30:23
back off that not any sons. I just want to mention that it would be a lot of vitamin A, right. Like if someone's like, I'm gonna go take some vitamin A. What you were taking was a lot. How did you arrive at 100,000 units for a week and then did you drive away? What

spk_0:   30:37
are you talking about? My recent time or my time? Many years ago. Where

spk_1:   30:41
you said e I think it was your scalp. So it was probably a long time ago.

spk_0:   30:46
Oh, yeah. Okay. That one. That was very high dose. So 100,000. I you have My name is very high dose. More recently, I was using 10,000 which I think is some more than is the average daily requirement, but is not that high? Yeah. I think it is wise to be checking safety measures and someone who's taking 100,000 at U of vitamin A per day. I think it's a little paranoid if it's short term use of 10,000 you labor day

spk_1:   31:10
about like largely in terms of skin. Like can we get into nutrients for skin? So can we talk about

spk_0:   31:17
Yeah, we can. I want to go back to something that you said that about fatty acids, and I want to make a point here. So this might be less heterogeneous than people are thinking. Because, yes, there are people who have deficiencies of synthesizing essential fatty acids that result in X Emma. So the ex Emma from a central fatty acid deficiency results from a deficiency of prostaglandin E to which is needed to regulate the expression of the genes that code for tight junctions and gap junctions that make up the skin barrier. So I think that if you looked at this from the perspective of what proportion of eczema is driven by a defective skin barrier, then I think it's gonna come out looking less heterogeneous. And it will probably mostly be driven by deficient prostaglandin E, too. If you're looking at it from a more like ultimate cause perspective, like what ultimately led you to not have enough prostitute vanity, too? I think it will be a very heterogeneous, whereas if you're looking at it from a more approximately mechanistic point, meaning more direct to the actual cause of like the step right before the defective skin barrier, my suspicion is, you're going to find it much less variable. That, in general, is skin barriers defective, and it's from deficient prostitution They need to, and just to give you a very underappreciated point about how it can seem a lot more variable when you look at the ultimate cause. So if you look at rival Flavin, deficiency by it and efficiency be six deficiency and essential fatty acid deficiency. This is four deficiencies, right? They have very similar skin manifestations. They're not exactly the same, but you can tease out a huge component of them that is remarkably similar. In fact, the cutaneous manifestations of rival Flavin and vitamin B six deficiency are identical, and there's just not that as many descriptions of them and be six deficiency, and the text books tend to gloss over it by just saying B six deficiency results in skin manifestations that look like rival Flavin deficiency. Well, why is that? Rival Flavin is needed to derive the vitamin B six found in plant foods and activate it into the form that we need in our bodies and vitamin B six and buy it in are both needed to convert the linoleic acid omega six fatty acid found in plant oils into the Iraq. A tonic acid, which is most abundant, and liver and egg yolks that we need in our bodies and the Iraqi Danek Acid is the precursor to the prostaglandin E to that makes the tight junctions and gap junctions and make the skin barrier. And so I think actually, there's an overwhelming component of all for deficiencies that are the exact same thing that are the basic defect in that X Emma that is characterized by a defective skin barrier and stuff like caucus aureus infection. And it's been documented in at least rival Flavin. Be six and biting deficiencies that if you culture the lesion, it's infected with Candida. So fungal overgrowth in the lesions is also a characteristic shared across these,

spk_1:   34:37
and typically the fungal and bacterial overgrowth will create some issues with just be complex absorption. Typically, those two things go to every other very commonly, because other organisms need you to do

spk_0:   34:51
me in the gut.

spk_1:   34:52
Oh, I mean in the guy you're talking about on the skin. I think if they're over

spk_0:   34:56
growing in the gut, for sure, and the thing is like if this is systemic.

spk_1:   35:00
I don't think they think that. I don't think they're totally separate. I think what happens in the gut often happened. I mean, I think they are separate, but at the same time, I think your body is interconnected, right? So I think I

spk_0:   35:11
agree with that. I mean, ultimately depends on the cause, right? Like if for any of these deficiencies the dietary deficiency, of course. Your guts going to suffer that deficiency as well as your skin. If, you know, sometimes it might be like topical insults were like, I do think the hands suffer from being constantly washed that they might be in a worse position than the gut, but

spk_1:   35:31
yeah, yeah, I agree. I was actually you had city did that before. And then you were talking about other disturbances to fatty acid status on the skin. And I was thinking just our environment could disrupt what's going on our skin as well, So well, I

spk_0:   35:45
mean, that's a great point to make. Especially because the proteins that make the skin waterproof are the same proteins that prevent leaky Got in the gut.

spk_1:   35:54
Yeah. Okay, so I want to recap you were talking about B six and buy dinner needed Thio member A. L A plant based for him to Iraq. A tonic acid, which is a precursor of prostaglandin. Me too. Which is why

spk_0:   36:05
l a little like acid. Ayla is deal omega three

spk_1:   36:09
little like acid to Iraq. A tonic acid. Yeah, which then helps with prostaglandin e to extradite. Essentially, which helps with tight cap junctions. You know, essentially a good skin and inside barriers like healthy tissue essentially appropriate. You were talking as well about rival gonna be six being necessary to convert the basics and plant foods to P five p, which is the animal form of B six. Do you want to talk about anything else about B six by 10? Any other B vitamins in relationship to skin issues? How about B five pentatonic Asa? I really like the five.

spk_0:   36:43
Yeah, Panda. Authentic asset has been studied mostly in respect to acne. So there's a number of studies using grams of pentatonic acid, which is a massive dose because the average person gets five milligrams, so a grimm is 1000 milligrams. So these studies air using several grams per day of pentatonic acid and teenagers combined with the decks Panton All which is a cream soluble form of pentatonic acid, that is, I've only been able to find it in wound healing creams, but you can get some of them on Amazon if you search for Dex Pantanal. But anyway, uh, these were highly successful trials with acne, and that's mainly how it's been studied. In that context, be five is, ah, necessary to synthesize fatty acids and all these other components that are gonna be parts of healthy skin.

spk_1:   37:38
So we're kind of talking about B vitamins, and I think maybe we want to mention we haven't really talked a ton about doses you can't overdo, really be vitamin dose. That's what your body is going to extreme them, whereas traditionally we think we want to pay more attention to our doses of a, D, E and K are fat soluble vitamins. Which brings me back to vitamin A. So deficiency in vitamin leaves this opportunity for fungal infections. What else do you want to talk about with vitamin A and relationship to its importance for skin healing before we lay that one to rest?

spk_0:   38:04
Well, actually, I do wanna say that there are some B vitamins that you can overdose on so rivals leaving on pentatonic acid. I have no known toxicity, but vitamin B six does have a toxicity syndrome and nice and has some adverse effects on its own toxicity syndrome as well.

spk_1:   38:26
What is the high dose of V six?

spk_0:   38:30
So the upper limit set by the Institute of Medicine is 100 milligrams, based on the fact that they were unable to find any case reports showing toxicity below 500 milligrams a day. And they added a safety factor in case some people are more sensitive. You can find people on the Internet that congregating groups claiming that they suffered neurological problems from, like five milligrams. But if that is a reactions exceedingly rare, so I generally think it's safe to supplement with up to 100 milligrams of B six per day, although I wouldn't go that high unless you need to. Yeah, by trial and error. So vitamin A and skin health, classically vitamin A deficiency involves hyper cara Tose iss, and so that's a buildup of carrot in in the skin and basically can manifest as things that look like goose bumps or act me. But they're not, and they're actually bumps of skin created by just the build up of the dead character. Nice cells that were usually making up a very thin layer. But you were saying before about how viewing ah, things outside our body is as indicators of what's going on inside is a perfect example, cause animal experiments show that actually, all the surfaces inside the body do the same thing. Sue basically get Keiper keratosis in the inner cavities of your body everywhere. And that's functionally very bad, too, because you wind up wiping out the normal cellular structures there. And so particularly in mucus membranes, it's very harmful because in mucus membranes you wipe out the mucus producing cells and replace them with dry dead carrot, an isosceles. And that's really bad in the eyes and the throat. And things like that, but by many more generally, is just a critical part of the immune system. It's needed to support every aspect of the immune system, ranging from antibodies, T cells, thio suppressing auto immune activity and it's rules in skin. Now they're gonna be very diverse and go far beyond the classical Leiper keratosis. It's also going to be protecting against fungal infection, which I think is what was going on with me and what you were saying about the mile clinic use. And it's also going to counter act any auto immune conditions that might be affecting the skin and so on.

spk_1:   40:47
And food based sources of vitamin A include liver and what else?

spk_0:   40:52
So vitamin. It comes in two forms. Retinol, which is found in animal foods, and karaoke night searcher found in plant foods. The retinol is what is needed to be in our bodies. To prevent vitamin A deficiency, We can convert Keratin Lloyd's into retinal, and so we get a portion of our vitamin A from plant foods. But the degree to which we were able to do that depends on genetics and many other factors. And so some of us are really bad at getting mighta made from plant foods. If you're good at getting bad made from plant foods, you get them from richly colored red, orange, yellow and green vegetables. But I like to view getting retinol from animal foods as insurance policy because unless you're doing a lot of testing, you really have no idea whether you're good converter or bad converter. And so it is better to hedge your bets on you might not be a great converter. You should get your basic minimal requirement as retinal from animal foods and so liver and call the viral their best sources. Egg yolks and butterfat are also decent sources. Traditionally, it looked like meat wasn't that great of a source. Meat besides liver, I mean, although there's some data coming in that we may have underestimated the retinal contents of regular meat. So probably all animal products provide some vitamin A. But egg yolks and butter fat are the main non liver sources, and then liver and cod liver oil, which just happens to be an extract of a particular liver of a fish, is really the number one source.

spk_1:   42:19
Thank you for mentioning the difference Green Plant based and animal based, because I think that's an important distinction that sometimes that doesn't get spoke to as much. And actually, I'm over here, going through my mental filing cabinet, thinking about my like, extreme fungal cases like those that are exposed to mold, and I'm gonna go back and look at all their vitamin day. It's actually in my brain. I'm like, Oh, yeah, I can remember that person. I would really love it. I mean, in that person, having really love what I'm doing Is this fun? I love looking at new dream patterns anyway, but I was thinking about different reasons. Vitamin It was low. But I just It'll be fun to go back and be like, Oh, yep, consistent in X y Z case. So all right, any other vitamins that you want to talk about related a skin We talked about bees and a Anything else?

spk_0:   42:59
Yeah, So zinc is particularly important to skin health. The earliest cases of zinc deficiency, or the most sensitive indicator of marginal zinc deficiency, tends to be patches of dry skin. And as zinc deficiency gets worse, there was generally can turn into ugly puss jewels and some people or acne and others. And you could make a pretty good case that acne, as it generally appears in the population, would respond well in many cases to improvements and zinc status,

spk_1:   43:32
which is very commonly low, at least in the people. I speak to my CIA be depressed in a lot of good health cases, so I'll

spk_0:   43:39
just mention that. Yeah, I think inadequate zinc is very common. And then there's a couple other minerals that cause skin problems. So Mangin ease deficiency causes a particular form of dermatitis that looks like tiny bubbles on the skin from block sweat glands. I suspect that that level of manganese deficiency is not very common, and actually it's in response to Mani's deficiency that's only been observed in where they experimentally depleted people of manganese. And then it's called Millie era Kristalina. And that's a broader condition that isn't exclusively tied to manganese deficiency. But when they experimentally deplete people of manganese, it happens, Ken, but is not necessarily be a result of manganese deficiency, and then, depending on the nature of this skin problem, I think sometimes skin problems can be driven by self fights. In some people, sell, fight causes allergy like reactions that are probably a result of histamine release. But they're not in response to a specific introgen, so that can lead to just classic allergy symptoms like dermatitis, hives, flushing and things like that. And those things air chronic and they seem allergy like, but it seems like you have them all the time. Instead of in response to specific foods that it could be driven by something increasing just systemic histamine as an example and salt like could be one of those things. Mulet Denham is, Ah, mineral that's necessary to clear self fight. I think more people are familiar with so fight as a food additive, and a lot of, you know, wine. Generally, people who know about self fights are looking for so fight free wine. It's also added to a lot of other processed foods. There's high months and dried fruit, for example, but also a lot of cosmetics and medical products have sold fight additives. But so far it's also generated inside our bodies during normal metabolism of protein. And so you might not be consuming self fights as food additives and might still have a soul fight problem. And then, of course, if histamine levels are systemically elevator, that's kind of opens up a whole can of worms of other nutrients that could be involved in histamine metabolism, especially vitamins.

spk_1:   45:51
I want to ask you about Melinda them because I want to talk about dosage when playing with this and test Steen. Some people just recommend, Hey, if I feel like I have issues with wine in general. Then you can just trial some Melinda, right? But let's talk about that a little bit more. Is there someone that offers Melinda? I'm testing?

spk_0:   46:07
Yeah, there's a company HDR. I offers serum or whole blood Melinda in, um, this company is a little frustrating to work with because they tend to not have very good customer service. And because they're a small lab, unlike the big ones like lab Corn Quest, they tend to get back to you after quite a pile of waiting. But they do offer tests for Mulligan. Um, And then there's some other testing that I have in the cheat cheat where you can, like, indirectly, look at Mullah Benham status. But to be honest, I'm not too worried about testing in most cases because there is not really any demonstrated harm to supplementing with modestly high doses of molybdenum. And so if someone's gonna take, like, 100 50 micrograms or even 500 micrograms a day of Melinda in, um for a couple weeks and see if they're issue responds to it, I don't think that's dangerous on you know, you can get results faster that way doing that? Another thing is just look at your diet. So if you're not eating lagoons, which are like lentils, peas and beans on, and if you're not evening liver than you're probably not getting enough militant. Come on top of that. If you're eating a lot of animal protein, you're probably increasing your needs for Mullah Denham. If you're on birth control, you're probably increasing your needs from 11. Um, if you're on hormone replacement there, but you're probably increasing your needs for Mulligan on. If you're consuming soul fights, you're probably increasing your needs for more than and so those air patterns that air fairly easy to deduce.

spk_1:   47:33
All right, so we've talked about Olodum. We've talked about assortment of the vitamins we talked about Vitamin A, talked about zinc. Just Can we want to talk about vitamin D or any or Colin or anything else? Yeah,

spk_0:   47:48
Vitamin D is important for protecting and psoriasis, although I think that photo there P and sunlight are broader in their effects in just generating vitamin D, and there's actually vitamin D metabolites generated by degradation of vitamin D in this skin by ultraviolet light that are very important to protecting against psoriasis. I think that makes a better case for getting sunlight and or photo therapy than it does for taking vitamin d. Lose the other other one you mentioned calling. Oh, Coleene. What have you seen tying? Calling the skin health.

spk_1:   48:24
I've just seen cooling being good for skin, liver, brain health. And I would say, and also coleene helps clear histamine. So somebody histamine is going to create skin issues, as you were just talking about. So I've seen it be really useful, actually.

spk_0:   48:37
Oh, interesting. Through revelation,

spk_1:   48:39
you think about the mega dozens all the time. I think about like, Oh, yeah, this works for this and I see it work. So I just know trolling Colin has worked very nicely. I like faceted coleene. Some of my colleagues look, Salim Bhai titrate. I like basset alkaline. There's some stuff out there about Coleene Bean useful when there's fungal and mold over growth as well. So use high doses sometimes, in that case, but personally

spk_0:   49:07
interesting. I didn't know that

spk_1:   49:09
Yeah, I used to use calling all the time and kiddos and it seemed to be really effective. And sometimes I'll like you something for a while. Then I'll try to limit the amount of stuff I'm using and then stop using it, you know? So I used to use it a lot. Felt like it worked really well, I'm also a little bit of a guinea pig. I like it quite a bit when I'm thinking about like, I think it just is really nice. He ran like, dry skin. So cool. Yeah. All right. So I think you can go talk forever about a lot of topics, right? I mean, it's just hard. It's hardened, and we kind of like t riff on a few things. I think we also talked about largely food based sources for a lot of things as well. So I think we can pretty much covered that. Are there any other nutrients that you think? Hey, I've got a skin thing. What else don't want to look at? I mean, think also, it would be a good place to mention. Is there anything that you think should be tested before you experiment?

spk_0:   49:54
Well, that's a big question

spk_1:   49:56
way don't have the answer that way.

spk_0:   49:59
Yeah, I mean, it's a very case by case basis. So, like some of these nutrients have toxicity syndromes and some don't. And of the ones that we mentioned, probably the ones that are most important to do. Testing around would be vitamin A and vitamin D. What else did we talk about? Uh, Simmons and think largely, Ah, the vitamins A and D are probably the most important to do testing around zinc B six and nice. We don't really talk about nice and but nice and is one of the B vitamins that does have a skin related issues. But those were the other ones that do. You have some degree of safety issues that I would recommend testing around. But I don't think any of these really absolutely require testing before experimenting. It just depends what kind of experiment you're gonna run, you know? So I think a lot of these have very safe doses that could be experimented with without testing. But certainly if you're gonna do something like 100,000 I you a vitamin a per day for that week mandated. Yeah, that's something you want to do testing around because the doses so high.

spk_1:   51:12
Yeah, very high. And I will say I'm a fan of testing, but like you said, sometimes it's not always necessary, and it doesn't hurt to experiment with something first. So it kind of depends on how severe the case is, what you're looking for. Specifically, if you've already tried things and you're not having success, then it may be a good time to get some data to help guide future decisions as well.

spk_0:   51:31
Yeah, I think testing comes into play as most important when either the result of the test is going to make the difference between an action that you would carry out that is just either The action mayor may not be safe, depending on the result of the test. Or you might taken an action in two completely different directions, depending on the test. And then the other place where testing is really valuable is if you're doing some kind of screening test and you're testing things that aren't you don't necessarily have a hypothesis around. You might uncover information that was outside the box that you were thinking within sometimes, like you know, even someone who's great at coming up. But hypotheses like I'm pretty good at figuring things out. But I might run a big lab panel that turns up something that I wasn't thinking about so much had seven hypotheses about what was going on. But the lab test turned up something that was totally different. And, you know, it's like if you're gonna experiment with something, you get faster results if you just do the experiment because the lab testing takes time. But if your lab testing is broad enough to catch things you're not thinking about, then you might find something because the lab picked it up months before you would ever think of trying. So

spk_1:   52:43
there's Ah, case for both. And combining both is a great plan. So, Chris, you've got a book coming out and tell us about it.

spk_0:   52:51
Yeah, it's called vitamins and minerals 101 How to get the nutrients you need on any diet. And this book is basically I would describe it as light, fun and entertaining, but also very practical, very educational and potentially transformational. So it really is like this book is for people who are curious enough about nutrition toe Wanna learn and understand what vitamin A is, what vitamin D is, what zinc is things like that. So it's definitely not for people who just want quick fixes to something like. It's not for the person who says, like, Oh, my skin is bothering me, What do I do about it? And yet it is very practical. So there's a chapter on each nutrient that walks you through. What is that nutrient? What does it do? Why is it important? How much do you need? How do you get what you need from food? And when should you think about supplementing? When might you think about whether you have too much or how to know whether you don't have enough and things like that? So if you're curious about the nutrients enoughto wanna learn about each one, then this is definitely a book that you would like, and it kind of ties everything together at the end by giving real practical advice about what to eat if you were trying to get all your nutrients from food, but then also breaks it down for people in different diets. You know, I talked earlier about my bad experience with veganism. This book doesn't take a position on veganism or paleo orc ito or whatever, but it does bring those up as a matter of saying. What are the nutrients that you might have to think a bit more about If you're on a vegan diet or if you're on a carnivore diet Orgeron Taquito diet, you're on a paleo diet, And how would you design the diet differently to meet all your nutritional needs if you're doing any of those? That's why the subtitle is How to get all the Nutrients You Need on any diet.

spk_1:   54:47
Yeah, I love that. That you added that subtitle. I think it's like a riel problem solver, and it now becomes applicable to many people. It's like, Oh, that's a good point because there are many types of eating that they may be a little insufficient in one thing and happy. So you clearly thought through that. Chris, where can people find you online and working people pre order the book or order the book?

spk_0:   55:08
Yeah, you can find me at Chris Master john PhD dot com, and if you just click on book from the menu, you can peer toe or order the book.

spk_1:   55:16
Awesome. Thank you. We'll be on Amazon when this comes out. Or will it still be on Chris master john ph dot com Or don't you know yet

spk_0:   55:23
it will be on Amazon and this will come out around the time. It will probably be available on Amazon.

spk_1:   55:31
Great. Thanks so much for coming on today and riffing about skin, nutrients and conditions with me.

spk_0:   55:37
Thank you for having me on. That is great.

spk_1:   55:39
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