Radical Health Rebel
Welcome to the Radical Health Rebel Podcast, where Leigh, a renowned Functional Medicine Practitioner, CHEK Practitioner, CHEK Faculty Instructor, Active Release Techniques® Therapist, Emotion Code Practitioner, author, and podcast host, takes you on a journey to achieve optimal health, wellness, and happiness. With his extensive training and years of clinical experience, Leigh provides a truly holistic approach to health that has proven effective even when other methods have failed.
Join us every week for insightful discussions and expert interviews focusing on chronic pain, gut health, and skin health. Leigh's diverse background and passion for holistic healing brings you valuable knowledge and practical tips from leading experts in the field. Whether you're struggling with persistent health issues or simply looking to enhance your well-being, the Radical Health Rebel Podcast is your go-to resource for achieving a vibrant and healthy life. Tune in and start your journey to radical health today!
Radical Health Rebel
136 - Overcoming Adult Acne Through Holistic Healing with Evan Transue
In this episode of the Radical Health Rebel Podcast, I sit down with Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner Evan Transue to discuss his personal battle with adult acne. Evan shares the challenges he faced, the emotional toll it took, and the turning points in his journey toward healing. We dive deep into the holistic processes he used to address the root causes of his acne, rather than just the symptoms, and how he managed to achieve clear skin. This inspiring conversation offers valuable insights for anyone struggling with acne or seeking to understand the interconnectedness of skin health and overall wellness. Tune in to learn from Evan's transformative experience and discover practical tips for overcoming adult acne.
We discussed:
0:00
Overcoming Adult Acne Through Holistic Healing
3:20
Navigating Health Challenges Through Holistic Healing
7:47
Effects of Acne on Mental Health
17:53
Impact of Acne on Psychological Health
21:21
Low Self-Worth and Social Struggles
You can find Evan @:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joelevancoaching/
Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1664038/share
Don't forget to leave a Rating for the podcast!
You can find Leigh @:
Leigh's website - https://www.bodychek.co.uk/
Leigh's books - https://www.bodychek.co.uk/books/
StickAbility - https://stickabilitycourse.com/
Eliminate Adult Acne Programme - https://eliminateadultacne.com/
Substack - https://substack.com/@radicalhealthrebel
YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@radicalhealthrebelpodcast
Rumble Channel - https://rumble.com/user/RadicalHealthRebel
anyone who suffered with acne knows this. You spend a lot of time on the internet forums getting these very weird recommendations, but some of them are sound, and so people would talk about the processed food sugar. Also. People would talk about this kind of paradoxical thing where they're like, well, stop using cleansers and that could help your skin. So I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't even imagine stopping using a cleanser. That sounds like a scary thing to do, because I've used it since I was nine. Now, so I stopped the cleansers, I start eating organic. I said I'm just going to give this 30 days. I kid you, not that photo that I showed you before the extreme one. My skin got about 70% better within those 30 days.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Radical Health Rebel Podcast. I'm your host, lee Brandom. This work started for me several decades ago when I started to see the impact I could make on people, helping them to identify the root cause of their health problems that no doctor could figure out, including serious back, knee, shoulder and neck injuries, acne and eczema issues, severe gut health problems, even helping couples get pregnant after several IVF treatments had failed. And it really moves me to be able to help people in this way, and that is why I do what I do and why we have this show.
Speaker 2:In this episode of the Radical Health Rebel podcast, I sit down with functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner, evan Transu, to discuss his personal battle with adult acne. Evan shares the challenges he faced, the emotional toll it took and the turning points in his journey towards healing. We dive deep into the holistic processes he used to address the root causes of his acne rather than just the symptoms, and how he managed to achieve clear skin. This inspiring conversation offers valuable insights for anyone struggling with acne or seeking to understand the interconnectedness of skin health and overall wellness. Stay tuned to learn from Evan's transformative experience and discover practical tips for overcoming adult acne. Evan Transu, welcome to the Radical Health Rebel podcast. Thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me, sir, and I already said this to you. I'm just saying this for anyone watching. Normally I got a little fancier of a background for the podcasts, but I'm currently traveling. It's Thanksgiving in America, so that's what we got going on. At least I got the good mic still.
Speaker 2:Cool, yeah, I mean it still looks fine anyway, probably got better lighting than me. But as we were chatting before we started, it is pitch black at four o'clock in the afternoon here in the UK as we're recording, so it can be a challenge to get the lighting right Anyway. So, evan, to kick things off, could you perhaps share a little bit about your background, maybe a bit about your kind of educational and professional background, and also maybe a little bit about your own health journey as well, just so that the listeners get a feel for who you are.
Speaker 1:Sure, I'll give the summary version and then whatever parts we want to dive into, feel free. But I've had a really unconventional life in most areas. I would say the health issues are an essential part to understanding the career side, because everything that I have done career side so far has completely stemmed from the health issues. So again, the summary summarized version of it is the health issues started at around five years old. My parents and I didn't really know what was going on. We did go to doctors and try to get things figured out, but it didn't really work the way that we wanted it to. And fast forward a bit, by the age of 18, I actually had seven different diagnosed conditions, and I always put emphasis on the word diagnosed, not because I'm dismissing anyone that believes they have certain conditions and hasn't been diagnosed. But there is a difference between thinking, hey, I feel really crappy and I got all this stuff going on, versus like, no, these doctors are acknowledging yeah, you're messed up enough that we can put seven different labels on this, and it was really the seventh diagnosis. I don't know why it was that one, I could guess, but there's probably a variety of reasons, but that seventh diagnosis was really the time in my life when I started to actually question this, and even though I was only 18, it's not like I had some doctorate or wasn't some super smart guy it just didn't add up to me that I could be getting worse and worse health-wise as I was getting older, so to speak. It's not like I was 78 years old, but I did reflect on that. It was a powerful reflection. I said if this is me at 18, what does 78 years old look like? More importantly, will I even make it to 78 years old if my health keeps deteriorating in this way?
Speaker 1:As I started to embark on this journey of healing, while most of my friends were going to college for four years or whatever they were doing, I didn't go to college. I spent that time deeply involved in reading Dr YouTube, dr Google, really experimenting on myself with different holistic modalities because, quite frankly, I was so banged up at that point I could not maintain the rigor of a college schedule. I definitely could not maintain the rigor of a normal work schedule. So I just thank God that I have parents that were nice enough that you know it's not like I was 18 and they're like get the heck out of our house. They love me to death, and my mom had a lot of health issues too. So even though I hadn't discovered the holistic stuff and my mom didn't know anything about that at the time, there was a lot of empathy for, okay, hey, he's trying to figure this out, we don't know if he can, maybe it's unlikely, but if he does, this is going to be great, and so there was kind of a mutual benefit there. So I spent a few years living with them and figuring this stuff out, having very low cost of living, and all the money that I did make extra which was not much went to organic, high quality food, different supplements, courses, many stuff, if you will, books and just really educating myself.
Speaker 1:And once I started to get myself healthier, that is when I decided that this was going to be what I wanted to do with my life. It's what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I've developed that into two kind of separate career paths, but fundamentally they come from the same thing, and one of them is as a youth mental health speaker. So I go into high schools and colleges. I've done many middle schools in the past too, but now I like high schools and colleges and I go in there and I share a kind of classic motivational speech, but it's around mental health, so it encourages them to ask for help with their mental health issues. It also lets them know that not only can you live a good life if you've had mental health issues, you can turn it into your superpower and really go live an amazing life.
Speaker 1:And then my other thing outside of that is I'm very involved in the functional medicine world. That's why I'm here and I host the Health Detective Podcast for functional diagnostic nutrition. That's where I got one of my parts of education from. It was an online course, still is. And then I do some business stuff on the side, like independently, but everything that I do is involved with this space. So would I wish the health issues upon myself again? Not necessarily has it been able to become a kind of beautiful thing where it's almost like I traded off the teenage years and childhood for an awesome rest of my life. Yeah, I mean, it's worked out as well as it possibly could. So that's kind of the summarized version.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think what would be interesting, if you're comfortable, to maybe talk a little bit about the actual challenges that you face, shall we say you said about the age of five it kind of started. Can you maybe tell us in a kind of chronological order of what you went through?
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's dive into that. So the first health symptoms that happened around five years old were a mix of mental and physical, and that reflected still at 18. When I said, I had seven different diagnosed conditions. Three of those were mental, four were physical. Now I largely consider those similar now, but you get what I'm getting at. So five years old the symptoms were I'd get these extreme stomach pains, I'd get migraine headaches and then I would get panic attacks. Now I'm saying these things like matter of fact now because I have the education to understand this.
Speaker 1:There are many times in my story where I did not understand what these things were. Certainly at five years old I had no idea what a panic attack was. My parents didn't know what this was, and these are terms that, thankfully, are becoming more well known. It's bittersweet because, on one end, it's becoming more well known because I think more people are dealing with it, but on the other sense, it's a great thing, because panic attacks are scary as hell. You actually feel like you're going to die and I know that can sound a bit dramatic, even for someone who is listening to a podcast like this and understands the holistic side. When someone says something like that, you're like is that a little dramatic? You feel like you're going to die. What I would encourage the audience to do is look up on Google symptoms of a panic attack and you can go to any medical journal you want and you'll find that one of the key hallmark symptoms of a panic attack is called fear of impending doom. So that's actually a symptom of the panic attack. Now again, we didn't know that at the time. All we knew is the symptoms. So imagine we're going 24 years back now because I'm 29 years old. So 24 years ago, how different the awareness and societal stigma was around mental health. It was wildly different compared to today, even the last five years Again, bittersweet thing with COVID, but it brought a lot of light to the mental health issues. So my parents and I didn't have a label at five years old for a panic attack. All we knew is that, you know, once, twice, maybe three times in a month span, I get this feeling where I'm freaking out for 20 minutes saying I'm gonna die, saying I can't breathe, and believe it or not.
Speaker 1:It did not take too many of those happening before my parents said, okay, this is, you know, wild. We got to get this checked out. Let's take him to a doctor. We go to the doctor and this is probably one of the most important parts of my story I I got to be honest. If the doctor had actually answered correctly or gave us a correct diagnosis, I don't know if I'd be here today doing this kind of stuff with you. I might've taken a whole different path in life and I don't know if it would have been for better or for worse. I doubt it actually would have been for better. But he looked at my parents and I. This is one of the only things I remember from five years old because it had such a profound impact on me. He said this isn't something to worry about. He's talking to my parents. Actually, evan just gets himself a little too worked up and he's going to outgrow this.
Speaker 1:Now, this was not a doctor with malintent. I always want to specify that when I get on these shows. Are there bad people in Western medicine? I'm sure there are. I'm sure there are bad people in every career path that you could possibly take. This was not a bad person. This wasn't a person trying to screw us over.
Speaker 1:I think the same stigma that affects people even today around mental health, I think it also affects doctors. Yes, maybe a doctor would have been more likely to not be affected by the stigma than compared to my parents, but still there is a stigma associated for all these things. So I don't think he understood yet that this was a panic attack, and the only reason I ever knew it was a panic attack is because I came in for the same symptoms over a decade later and I finally got diagnosed. But that's getting ahead of myself. Him saying to me and my parents that this wasn't something to worry about and I'm going to outgrow this again was one of the most impactful things in a negative way, because I didn't get better. I got a lot worse and it was a slow trickle throughout the years. So six a little worse than five, seven a little worse than six, et cetera, up until the point of my early teens and 15 years old. It was a daily battle that was just debilitating.
Speaker 1:But my mindset was because again, I'm using like five to 10 year old logic the worse that I got, the more solidified I became in the belief that I can't talk about these things. And the reason that belief became more solidified is because I kept thinking well, if the doctor can't figure it out. If I'm supposed to outgrow this, and I'm not, maybe I'm the problem, and I think this is something that all of us deal with to some degree, and what I mean by that is we deal with the consequences of putting doctors and nurses and these medical professionals on a pedestal. At the same time, I like to have a balanced approach because, yes, they do go to school for a while. Yes, these people are usually very damn smart my sister's a nurse, so they do know what they're talking about with a lot of stuff, but they are not God. They do not know everything about every issue ever.
Speaker 1:And I allowed that bias to affect me in a very young age and, of course, I guess who wouldn't at five, six years old. I'm not blaming myself for it, but I allowed that to affect me, and it was the idea that this doctor is infallible, this doctor can't be wrong, so it must be a problem with me. And I started to develop a very negative mindset, as you can imagine, around this. I used words like I'm crazy. I used words like I'm messed up, I don't belong here, because I could not understand how a human being could possibly trick themselves, over and over and over again into thinking for 20 minutes that they're going to die, and then being I mean a little upset obviously afterwards, but otherwise fine.
Speaker 1:And I think that's one of the most torturous things about panic attacks is some people I've talked to. They said that they get better. That was not my experience at all. I believe them, but that was not my experience at all. Every single time I genuinely believed this was going to be the one that was going to kill me. This was going to be the one where I actually stopped breathing. This was going to be the one where I have a heart attack. Even when I started to identify what a panic attack was, it did not change my experience while I was dealing with it that I was terrified. So those were the symptoms and by 15 years old I had full blown panic disorder.
Speaker 1:And for those that don't know, the difference between panic attacks and panic disorder is really about the frequency, more or less so panic disorder. This has now become such a regular issue for the individual and myself in this case that I became preoccupied with worrying about when the next one's going to happen. I'm creating these kind of arbitrary rules in my life about where I can't go and what I can't do so that a panic attack doesn't get triggered. And when I say that those rules were arbitrary, what I mean is you'll hear people use the words online, especially now on TikTok and stuff like that anxiety attack and panic attack. They're very similar, if not identical, symptoms. They actually are two different things.
Speaker 1:An anxiety attack is something that has a clear trigger. So let's say, I'm someone that's terrified of flying on planes. If that's the only time that I get those feelings like I'm going to die, I'm going to die. That is still very serious, but that's an anxiety attack, because if I'm not on the plane, I never feel it. If I go on the plane, I know I'm going to feel it, so there's a clear trigger. A panic attack is the same feeling, except there are no necessary triggers. You could get this at any time.
Speaker 1:So when I use the word arbitrary rules, I'm saying that very specifically, because you can create all the rules that you want. You can say I'm not going to go out with friends, I'm not going to go here, I'm not going to do this, you're still going to have panic attacks. And so it got to the point where I'm 15 years old, I'm lucky enough to have a great friend group, but I'm literally retreating from these friends for months at a time because it was so debilitating trying to go out. And again, I'm still having the panic attacks at my parents' house all the time. But it was just this made up story in my head that if I kind of isolate into all this stuff, you know, maybe I can somehow control this, but you're unable to control it. So that's panic disorder. And then the last thing I'll say, just in terms of health symptoms, is so 15, I have that going on at the same, like that was the biggest problem that I had by far. But there were other things happening depression, uh, gird, chronic sinusitis, uh, severe cystic acne. There was a bunch of other health symptoms going on.
Speaker 1:And it wouldn't be until 18, as I mentioned in the beginning, that I really even did anything about this stuff, because the next three years were just living on the edge, taking risks that I shouldn't have been taking and trying to find coping mechanisms for what I was dealing with, and my coping mechanisms were not reaching out. They were not asking for help. I was so beyond the point of thinking I'd ever ask for help at that time. My coping mechanisms were drugs and even though I was the last person in my friend group to try drugs, I was actually quite against them. I was. I think this came from the anxiety I was scared to do drugs. So that was the one good part about anxiety. But after a few months of seeing my friends use drugs regularly and then you know, you start to see like, okay, well, they're not dead, you know, they're still here, they're doing this all the time and they sure look like they're having a better time than me, that's for sure. Not that that was saying much.
Speaker 1:I started to use these drugs, but I became the one with the biggest problem pretty much within a matter of a month or two, because I was the one that was hiding the mental health issues with the stuff. So it was the first thing in my life. Drugs and alcohol well, I mean, alcohol is a drug, obviously, but you know what I? It was the first thing in my life that gave me any distraction whatsoever, any temporary relief from what I was dealing with, and that was the worst thing I possibly could have done. Drugs were the absolute worst decision I ever made regarding these health issues and mental health issues, because it was something that worked for a time. It was something that gave me an escape, and I think this is something people need to be a lot more transparent about when they're sharing these stories, because it's amazing how many people that struggled with substance abuse or addiction get on these podcasts now and share these stories, but they act like the drugs were never good or they never worked. No, I want to be transparent with people.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't do something continuously if I didn't like it. In the beginning. I loved it. I'm like this is awesome.
Speaker 1:I found something that worked, but I always describe drugs as the metaphorical devil. Now I'm a Christian, so I actually do believe in God and I do believe in Satan. Those are things I believe in, but you don't have to be a Christian or religious at all to understand what I'm saying as a metaphor, when I say it's the metaphorical devil, I mean drugs give you the instant gratification. That's what Satan does. You sell your soul, but you lose everything as time goes on.
Speaker 1:So the drugs did work and they worked fast, but what I didn't see is the devil waiting behind the door saying well, the longer you do this, you're going to have new problems with the drugs and, worse yet, I've never gotten to the root of why I'm dealing with this to begin with. So even if and when I have the ability to deal with the problem of the drugs, I still got a whole slew of bull crap to deal with under that. So I'm sorry, I know it's a lot. I'll take a pause there. But yeah, that's kind of where I was at in the teenage years.
Speaker 2:Okay, so there was certainly a lot going on. What age, what age did you say?
Speaker 1:your severe cystic acne started. I've showed you pictures before. Believe it or not, that wasn't until the late teens. But cystic acne that's like you're embarrassed about that was 15, 16, okay so was it?
Speaker 2:did you have more minor acne at a younger age?
Speaker 1:I first started breaking out at nine years old and it did not stop until a few years ago, right okay, interesting, wow, that's.
Speaker 2:That's the youngest I've heard of, because it's normally sort of 12, 13, 14. For most people. It generally kind of ties into to puberty starting yeah, well, that's, and that's the thing.
Speaker 1:We hadn't even learned about it yet. So it was very awkward. And listen, I want to be clear. I wasn't getting the cysts back then, but my chin would start to get extremely oily, my nose would get extremely oily and I'd get like little red breakouts and little white heads. But we hadn't even learned about acne and health ed yet. So it's not even that kids were making fun of me. It was just that they were constantly pointing it out because it was so abnormal, um, which, of course, doesn't make you any more comfortable with it. It's almost as bad as getting made fun of. But it was so weird to go through that experience at the time and it's like, as far as I knew, no one was even making fun of me. They were just like what the hell is going on with your face and, um, I didn't know either. It was very embarrassing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now, obviously it started at nine and it's getting worse as you go through the teenage years, and you're already suffering from psychological issues. Right, so you're suffering from panic attacks. What kind of psychological effect did having acne have on you? Simon had battled acne since his teens. Years of antibiotics and Accutane brought little relief, leaving him anxious and frustrated whenever a breakout occurred. When Simon came to me at age 31, he immediately changed his diet, reduced alcohol and followed a gut balancing plan Combined with targeted supplements. Simon experienced his longest breakout free period since his teenage years. Now simon is confident in his skin and empowered by the knowledge that his lifestyle choices keep his acne under control. And you can achieve the same freedom. Visit wwweliminateadultacnecom to request your acne breakthrough. Call today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I'm sure it did not make the depression. Let's actually let's take away the clinical stuff, because obviously that contributed to my anxiety. Obviously it contributed to depression. I do not think it's the cause of those things for me, but it did contribute. So the psychological effects outside of clinical diagnoses were there is.
Speaker 1:It's almost incomprehensible to me that my career now is podcasting and public speaking because I had such low self-worth. I mean, it was unbelievable. I I could not talk. I'm a heterosexual male and the reason I'm saying that is because you know, if males are going to get nervous talking to someone and they're straight, it'd be a woman that they're nervous about. Right, I would not be able to talk to anyone. It didn't matter if they were a kid, it didn't matter if they were an old guy God forbid. They were a pretty girl my age. I was so embarrassed to talk to people that I had this chronic blushing issue. I think it was justified. I did look bad.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately, I was very nervous and I didn't know how to talk and so it created this extremely low self-worth and an inability to really interact with people in any normal way.
Speaker 1:It was very performative in the sense of I just have to really impacted me in terms of making new relationships, which, of course, is very important in those high school years when you're considering your future or college. I mean, I was an enemy to my teachers at school. I'm not making relationships with them, so it was basically the only people I was remotely comfortable with were these people that I've known since third, sixth, seventh grade, except the problem with that is we're all doing drugs together. So the only people I'm comfortable with are those that are making terrible decisions along with me, and again, I fully participated in this. I was just as bad as all of them and I contributed my own things to those groups. No one peer pressured me or made me do anything. I always want that to be straightforward. But it's a really bad place to be in when you have this social embarrassment, low self-worth. You don't feel like you can go out and do anything, and then the only place you're comfortable is a place that completely promotes escapism with drugs.
Speaker 1:So that was probably the biggest thing is just this low self-worth feeling like I was not able to do normal things, like who would hire me eventually? Who would want to date this type of person? I did not have any value to myself whatsoever yeah, I mean it.
Speaker 2:It kind of. It kind of takes me back to you know. As you know, I suffered with severe cystic acne myself and I I wouldn't say I felt terrible speaking to anybody, but there were certain situations that were worse than others. For sure, and you know, dating and going for job interviews, because for me, you know, for me, it carried on until I was 31, you know. So I had it for 18 years. You know, going for job interviews and and dating were the worst things.
Speaker 2:But even you know, even just you know, whether it was going to school or just going to work and just facing people when you know your skin is really bad, you just don't want to face anybody, right? So I mean, you know, I've not spoken about this myself before, but I was kind of, in some ways, the way that I tried to deal with that was to try and be in denial, which sounds really weird. Because how can you be in denial? Because it's all over your face and sometimes I'd have, I mean, every day. Again, you might relate to this Every day. I'd probably spend half an hour to an hour in front of the mirror and you're looking at all the spots on your face and you're thinking, oh, it's really itchy. Shall I squeeze that one, or is it going to make it look worse, or shall I just leave it? I mean, it looks bad enough now, but is it going to look worse or better? And you go through all those kind of decisions and sometimes you'd squeeze one or two and it'd make it look 10 times worse.
Speaker 2:And you think, oh, now I've got to actually go and face people looking like this, think, oh, now I've got to actually go and face people looking like this. And you know I do. I do remember those days and I'm and I'm really grateful that for the last, you know, 25 years, I've not been experiencing that. Um, so I I can definitely relate to to how that was feeling. And, and you know again, I've I've mentioned a number of times in my in the 1990s that when my skin got really bad, relationships ended and you think, well, keeps happening. It's probably not a coincidence, right, right, um, and and again, listen, I don't blame anyone for finding that unattractive, because I do myself right I appreciate you being objective with that, because I think people find it almost off-putting when I say that, no, that's the reality is.
Speaker 1:And listen, I want to specify something. If we're dating someone for five years and we're in love with them and then they start, you know, breaking out, okay, obviously, yes, if you're a half-decent human being, you're going to work with them through that, similar to a weight change or whatever it might be. That's a decent human being. But the bottom line is guys were animals and we look for certain things, uh, initially with attraction and, yes, I would look at myself and say I wouldn't, you know, pursue someone or date someone that's a woman that has a face that looks like mine, like that's when it really hits you hard, when you start to accept that you would not go out and date someone that looks like you or be with someone that looks like you, it's like that's.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's nothing that hits yourself worse, lower than that, or self-worth lower than that yeah, and it might not even be a purely physical thing, right, because and again you know, obviously we're males and, like it or not, we are attracted physically more than women are attracted physically, but physically. But when you're covered in acne, what does that do to your own confidence? How are you going to carry yourself right? Such a good point, right? And then your partner's looking at you and maybe even at a subconscious level thinking, well, he's not very confident. That's not the kind of man I want to be with. Right, because you do. It's very difficult, if not impossible, when your skin's looking really bad, to feel and act in a confident way.
Speaker 1:You're right. So it has this dual effect where, yes, physically it might literally not be attractive, but you're also and I think women especially respond to this, and I only know this because I mean, when you do podcasting and speaking, you're, you have to, even if you're not, you have to act super confident and you can find, oh, females really like this, right, my wife loves that about me. So, of course, you're not going to act that way. If you have the acne and you're thinking those thoughts, so you're right, it just ends up being this self-fulfilling prophecy where it's like, well, I shouldn't have confidence because of the acne, so I don't act in a confident way. And now you've, I mean you're hitting the double whammy for things that, excuse me, just aren't attractive. So I just appreciate you saying that.
Speaker 1:I also wanted to emphasize something that you mentioned about the denial thing, because I wouldn't have used that word until you said it. And then you also said I think you almost have to be in denial, and that is true, because for me, most of this was in my teenage years, but it broke into my early 20s, very early 20s and late teens. At that point, though, I had to start testing out different careers, and when I look back, it's not that I'm not trying to beat myself up about it, but when I look back I'm like I can't even believe I showed up to those places for any amount of time, and I think I almost did have to be in denial and just act like, oh, people aren't noticing this or they don't. You know, they're not really making that big of a deal of it. It's like, dude, there is no way in hell they did not notice this, like it was completely on one side of my face, like everyone noticed it, they noticed it from 30 feet away. But you almost need, you know, again some level of psychological denial to just operate in your daily life, because outside of the job, I mean, I didn't want to go in public. You know I would purposely go to the store like super late at night, or the 24 hour supermarkets with like a hoodie on, because I just did not want to interact with people.
Speaker 1:So it's like social anxiety on steroids, and at the time, you know, I'm still focusing on the holistic health stuff and I'm thinking that's the answer. I'm completely forgetting, though, how much health comes from positive relationships in our life, and that took me a while. My friend, like I was doing all the health stuff right and I'd gotten my skin mostly better, but not perfect before I realized maybe some of my health now is just coming from the fact that I'm living on this island, you know metaphorically, and I've isolated from everyone. But I don't need to do that. I probably didn't need to do that then and I don't definitely don't need to do that now. So it's amazing almost how, when I've gotten positive relationships back into my life, I can get away with things that would have made me sick before but I actually still feel totally fine now. It's kind of funny how that works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean what I was actually going to say and you just reminded me. You know, some days my skin would look really bad or I might have like one particular really large spot on my face that I've squeezed, and someone might say something and I might respond in a way that, looking back, was completely ridiculous. I might say, oh no, that's not a spot I've cut myself, cut myself, shaving or something like that. Right, and looking back, it's like, well, they the person I'm speaking to would have known I was just lying, but it was. It was just my way of coping with it, because I was so embarrassed and ashamed of of my condition. I just wanted to do anything to kind of, you know, run and hide from it, for want of a better phrase, you know. So, going back to okay, you're a teenager, your skin's getting really bad. You're obviously already seeing doctors anyway. What was, what was the first thing that you were kind of offered to try and help with your acne? Hey, rebels, did you know?
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Speaker 1:Oh, the first thing ever would have just been I went in for the acne very early. That was definitely the thing that I kept up with the doctors the whole time, because my mom also had cystic acne when she was younger. So we went to the exact same dermatologist even, and my mom eventually used Accutane so we'll get there but it started out actually very benign. She tried to do the best that she could Again, another good doctor trying to do the best that they can with what they know and it started out with just like I mean the clear asils and the proactives like make sure you're trying some of these systems and do that. Okay, that doesn't work. Then the antibiotics came in, and I had already taken a lot of antibiotics. I was still taking them frequently because of the sinus infections I would get, and so I ended up being on like well over 20 courses of antibiotics before the age of 18. And when I say courses, I mean some of these lasted over a month. So I was beaten the hell out of my gut too, which, of course, just made the acne worse.
Speaker 1:After it's done the other thing, I would say this is the thing that probably worked the best as a treatment. It was the tretinoin cream retinol that people get prescribed and which is really interesting because the average consumer of this stuff does not understand that. Accutane is more or less a synthetic vitamin A derivative. Now I'm not recommending it, but I'm saying that's what it is. Similarly, tretinoin is actually that as well. It's more or less the topical version. So it was interesting because that did work. But it would dry out your skin like crazy. So now my skin's flaking. You could not spend any amount of time in the sun. I'm already white as it is. If I spent any amount of time out in the sun, you're going to fry, burn, peel. So there was limitations with that. And then, of course, once I was starting to think from this holistic perspective, I realized this is just treating a symptom. So I'm happy that it's working, but I still want something more.
Speaker 1:And then, finally it was. I had to be 19 or 20 years old. I got prescribed Accutane and this is so dramatic. I might've told you this before privately, actually, on our other podcast, but I literally remember. I filled the prescription, I went to the pharmacy and I filled the prescription and I sat in the car and I looked in the mirror a bunch of times. And then I would look at the pills and I'd look in the mirror and I'd look at the pills and I kept thinking to myself all right, because I already knew a little bit about natural health I had not fully committed to it, but I knew about it and I said can I possibly be in any worse physical, mental or emotional pain right now? Like it really is one more pimple going to be the thing that completely shatters my self-esteem, the last 1% that there is? No, I am humiliated. I have acne all over my face. One more pimple. No one's even going to notice. And that wasn't just denial, that's real right. No one would be able to notice because there's so many. This and that wasn't just denial, that's real right. No one would be able to notice because there's so many.
Speaker 1:So what I did is I said, well, wait, this is an opportunity then, because I know how dangerous Accutane is. I don't want to take this, but the stress of the acne is killing me, probably worse than the Accutane will, and that's real too. That's a real point. But I said I might as well take another two weeks to a month to experiment with some things that I normally wouldn't do, to see if it impacts my skin. And if it doesn't, the Accutane will still be there. And if it does, well, then thank God.
Speaker 1:I tried, and so I did not take even one single pill of Accutane. I like actually popped it out of the thing. I threw that one away and I said I'm just going to go do this first and my first real experiment I fully committed to was I went all organic for 30 days. So I don't even mean like low carb, I don't mean paleo, I don't mean vegan, none of that. I was 19. You know, I that was above my pay grade to do any of those things at the time. I said all I'm going to do is go to this local health food store. I will buy the exact same stuff that I have right now, and I will just buy it organically. And I'm going to try to do a little less sugar. I remember that being one of the goals too is a little bit less sugar, but I would still buy organic processed foods, right. So it's not that I'm recommending that, I'm just saying that's what I was doing. I also said I'm going to stop the cleansers. So what I'm getting at here is anyone who suffered with acne knows this.
Speaker 1:You spend a lot of time on the internet forums getting these very weird recommendations, but some of them are sound, and so people would talk about the processed food sugar. Also. People would talk about this kind of paradoxical thing where they're like, well, stop using cleansers and that could help your skin. So I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't even imagine stopping using a cleanser. That sounds like a scary thing to do because I've used it since I was nine. Now, so I stopped the cleansers, I start eating organic.
Speaker 1:I said I'm just going to give this 30 days. I kid you, not that photo that I showed you before the extreme one. My skin got about 70% better within those 30 days. Now, obviously, those that are listening have no idea what I'm talking about. With the picture it's guys, it's a pretty bad case, like it's. It's pretty all um, it's up there with, you know, top 5% worst cases you've ever seen. So 70% better is still humiliating and way worse than most people would ever go through. But it gave me the one thing that I needed to commit myself to this lifestyle and still here 11 years later hope. I said, oh, this is working, like I'm actually moving the needle, and I will actually also be transparent and say the biggest burst of progress I ever made was always within that first 30 days.
Speaker 1:It was a major struggle to keep chipping away at that 30% after that, but once I saw that 70% move, I'm like screw this dude, I'm not doing this chemotherapeutic drug that is now labeled as an acne thing and that's actually that's not conspiracy crap for those listening, that's actually true. Isotretinoin, which is brand name or a generic name, accutane was a chemotherapy drug and then we realized it burns out the sebaceous glands, which is what produces our oil. So if you burn out the person sebaceous glands, most people will stop getting acne, but not everyone, and that's a whole's a whole separate conversation, right? So I said I'm not taking this thing, I'm not doing this. You have to sign a packet because it's so risky for your health. I'm not doing these things at 19 years old and I fully committed to it. So, yeah, that's the things that I tried and kind of what happened, but I was completely fully medication free after that. No more cleansers, no more even thinking about Accutane no more antibiotics.
Speaker 2:I never touched anything like that ever again. Yeah, it really saddens me when I look back at my own history, listening to your history, and my story was when I first went to a doctor, they gave me salicylic acid and benzoyl peroxide, right. So cleanser and an acne cream didn't do anything apart from making my skin super, super dry and flaky and red and sore, and then, when it went dry, it would actually start dripping with grease, because obviously it's on a feedback loop, so if your skin's dry, the sebaceous glands are going to start secreting more oil. So I had dry and oily skin and you know they actually just got worse. So then, okay, antibiotics which worked for a few weeks, and then it just got way worse after that and and sadly I wasn't intelligent enough to think at any point in the 18 years that hang on a minute, this isn't working. I need to stop these things. Right, because my thought was and I think you had a similar thought well, if I stop these things, it's only going to get worse. Right right now.
Speaker 2:Fortunately for me, accutane wasn't, wasn't an option I was given. I don't even know if it was around back then. I guess it probably was. But it really saddens me and it really frustrates me. Again, I go on these forums as well from time to time, when I've got time to try and drop in little nuggets of information. Drop in little nuggets of information and you know most people are literally just saying what product's going to solve all my problems? Right, and it's just so disheartening and you try and get across to people that these products aren't going to be the solution.
Speaker 2:You know, at best, if they worked and most of them don't for most people they're just treating the symptoms, right, and you know if, if you've got something being caused by something, so let's, let's give it an example. So one example that I've seen in people is they've got high levels of mercury in their system, which is causing their acne. I know it's causing their acne because when we do a heavy metal detox or a mercury detox, the acne goes away. Well, think of it this way If your body's full of mercury, is taking antibiotics and Accutane going to deal with the mercury toxicity in the body? Of course it isn't.
Speaker 2:If you keep loading more and more mercury in your body, which could potentially be doing you know whether it's from dental fillings or from eating lots of tuna fish as an example. What do you think is going to happen if 10, 20, 30 years down the line, you've still got that mercury toxicity in your body? You know, maybe you've used Accutane and maybe your acne is gone right Because you've got accutane and maybe your acne's gone right because you've got no sebaceous glands left, and then that then that's going to cause lots of other problems and hopefully your liver hasn't failed because of it and and hopefully it hasn't caused you to commit suicide, which again we know is a side effect of accutane, which is amazing, considering your history, that you was even offered that right yeah, damn good point you got a history of mental mental health issues, panic attacks, and then you were prescribed a medication that is known to cause suicidal thoughts, right?
Speaker 2:so so let's say you get to 40, let's say you know, let's say your accutane worked in terms of your acne, but you've still got all this mercury toxicity. And you get to 40 and you find a lump in your body somewhere and you go to the doctor and they say I'm really sorry, but you've got stage four cancer. You've got stage four cancer, right? Whereas if you'd have dealt with the root cause of the acne when you were a teenager, it's almost certain that you wouldn't have that mercury toxicity now, because, a you would know that even that thing exists and, b you would know how to detox it, and chances are you might be doing those from time to time anyway to make sure that you don't have mercury toxicity. Plus, you'd probably be replacing any mercury fillings in your mouth in the meantime and probably stopping eating large quantities of tuna fish, right?
Speaker 1:well, I can prove you right too. That's what that was crazy to watch, because my mom again, she had cystic acne, she took accutane. She didn't know anything about this stuff. By the time I was dealing with these things my mom had full-blown Graves disease. So for those that don't know, an autoimmune thyroid condition many people have probably heard of Hashimoto's thyroiditis. That's an autoimmune thyroid condition when it's underactive Graves disease. This is not scientific to say it this way, but for simple terms, it's almost like the opposite. You have the autoimmune disease, but everything is fast, everything's going on overdrive. So whereas hypothyroidism, you know, they can barely eat anything and they gain weight, my mom could fly through cookies all day long and her heart beats at 120 beats per minute sitting on the couch, um, so it's like everything's sp up. So she got her thyroid removed eventually before we learned about any of these things and thank God she's doing much better now. We've applied the functional methods to the best of our ability given her situation and it has helped dramatically.
Speaker 1:But I'm like, if that could still help someone like her, what would have happened if we got to her at 20 years old when she took Accutane? Because what you literally just said I watched it happen to a human being that I've lived with for most of my life. At that time I watched the other symptoms manifest. Yes, the skin got better. That did cure her acne quote unquote. She never really dealt with breakouts at all, ever again. She was one of the lucky ones that Accutane worked, but it came back to bite her because we never addressed the underlying causes and then, not to mention gosh knows what additional stressors Accutane put on the body and then it led to her thyroid getting freaking removed and seven to 10 years of just absolute hell dealing with the health symptoms of that.
Speaker 1:So was that worth not figuring this stuff out naturally? Of course not. And again, most people are coming from a place of genuine ignorance. They don't know that these things are resolvable naturally and at the same time, even if they do know that it is a commitment, I mean you really got to be dedicated to this lifestyle to make it work. You got to be all in, that's for sure. Especially with acne. It's pretty easy to get. It's. It's hard to get to a place where I'm sick enough that I would get severe cystic acne all over my face. It's fairly easy for me to piss off my body enough that I'm getting a few breakouts here and there. So it's a fine line in today's world, but if people could see what their future is like and they would know that just addressing this stuff now is not only helping the current problem of acne, but you're helping your future self. Your future self will thank you, man. I think they would change up how they're responding or how they're acting on these things thank you, man.
Speaker 2:I think they would change up how they're responding or how they're acting on these things. Yeah, I mean, I guess for a lot of people I said, it makes me sad and frustrated when I see people. They're looking for the magic bullet, they're looking for the special product that's going to solve all their problems and they're really victims of the society that we live in today. It's all pop a pill and I'm better Again. Sadly, people don't want to do the work. That's why they're looking for the quick fix. But it's also education. They don't really know about looking for the root cause. And even if someone like me goes onto a group, group, forum and says, look, you really need to go and look for the root cause. You know, without me spending hours every single week on a forum, you know I'm just dropping, dropping little nuggets of them. They're still going to sit there and think, but I don't know what's causing my acne, right, right, and you know that's kind of why I do what I do.
Speaker 2:That's why I wrote my book as well, because I also know that not everyone can afford to come to someone like us for help. You know, there's a lot of people with acne that don't earn a lot of money and that's and again, that's part of the problem, right, because people that can't afford good quality food are more susceptible to acne, of course, but most people can afford a 20 book, right, which is why I wrote it for people that literally, are struggling to pay for someone to consult with them and help them find out the root cause. I take people on a journey, step by step, that if you go through all the steps, you're almost sure, sure to find the root cause by the end of the book, so to speak, and some people only need to really do the first couple of chapters. I've had so many clients, particularly male, just change their diet, get their diet right for them, and all the acne is gone, right.
Speaker 1:Well, think about me with the 70% in one month. Yeah, I didn't need a coach to do that necessarily. That was something that could have been achieved by, you know, probably reading a book like yours. In fact, I probably would have made more progress because I was just going organic, I didn't know the other things right. So, and here's the thing, to get 100% better. Maybe does a majority of people, or even a fraction of people, need the labs. Sure, but if I told someone you can get 90 percent or 80 percent better, most of them are going to take that bet as well.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I think it's great when you can condense the information into something that is affordable. You know, even if someone's living off very little, if they're desperate enough for these health issues, you can, I mean, save 50 cents a day and you'll have the money in 40 days. You know what I mean. You can, you can figure that out, everyone can figure that out. So I just, yeah, I love people that, because I didn't write a book about the acne stuff, I wrote one about mental health, and just, you can help people a lot by just sharing your story. Even just having someone that relates to them is healing, let alone getting all the therapeutic benefits that are provided in the book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, provided in the book. Yeah, just just going back to you know you, you made your dietary changes, so your first step was just to go organic like you're saying. You didn't, you didn't really know much more than that and you kind of said that that 30 percent was. You know, it took a lot of time to get through that 30, whereas the the initial 70% was quite quick. And again, it's interesting relating my own story, because I would say I got 90% better in two weeks, wow, okay. But then it took me 10 years to knock off the other 10%. Right, but when I got down to that 90%, I no longer identified as someone with acne. It was at a point where I'd have two or three breakouts a year maybe, whereas I'd have two or three breakouts a day for 18 years. So what were some of the things that you did? After you improved 70%? How did you get that last 30%? What did you do?
Speaker 2:Meet Amir, a 42-year-old professional who struggled with acne for 30 years. Overweight and lacking energy, he spent 400 pounds every month on products trying to cover up his acne. His skin was oily, his face and scalp were covered in breakouts and he worried about how this might affect his work. After testing his gut microbiome, we discovered imbalances, including staphylococcus aureus, hormone issues affecting his energy and food sensitivities that likely contributed to his acne. Initially, amir struggled to commit to the program, but after a candid heart-to-heart he stepped up. With diet changes, lifestyle adjustments and targeted supplements. Amir finally saw progress. Within weeks, his skin cleared for the first time in 30 years, his energy returned and his confidence soared. If you're ready to transform your skin and reclaim your confidence, like Amir, visit wwweliminateaddleacnecom and request your acne breakthrough. Call today.
Speaker 1:This is when life just kind of continued to be a movie of sorts. I mean, so many things just happened in perfect succession. I had a car sales job actually at that time and the car sales and the humiliation there was kind of that was the first like big boy job I ever had, if you will. I couldn't maintain that. I made it like four months there before the embarrassment and humiliation got to me. That's why I ended up filling the prescription for Accutane and the next step was I quit the job and my mom comes to me all of a month later and she knows I'm into this nutrition thing now and I'm really dedicated to this and I'm seeing progress, and she shares with me an ad she got for something called the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, which is still probably the most popular health coaching school in the world today by far. I mean, they really kind of started the industry to some degree and I went through that.
Speaker 1:That was like my version of college and my parents actually loved it because they understood my situation and again, we're very fair and empathetic to it. But they also did have these aspirations of my sister and I going to college eventually, because my parents never had the opportunity to go to college. They didn't grow up in any way that would have supported that education wise or financial wise. So that was my version of college, if you will, and my parents were nice enough to cover that and pay for that, and I remember that was the first thing probably in my entire life that I was really excited to learn about. So iin sorry, institute for integrative nutrition, iin they released might be different now. They released their modules once a week at the time and it was like on fridays. So I was a 21 year old kid 20 year old kid maybe I don't ever get what exactly it was at the time and it was like on Fridays. So I was a 21 year old kid 20 year old kid maybe I don't ever get what exactly it was at the time 20 or 21 sitting there on a Friday night buffing out two, three hours worth of modules and then I'd have to wait till the next week to get my stuff.
Speaker 1:So IIN helped me understand a lot more of what led to my reality with my health. It also gave me a bigger picture perspective. But and bigger picture perspective I like the program, but one thing that I did struggle with there a little bit is. They taught so many different dietary theories and brought in so many different types of speakers that I felt like I had a lot to do. But if I really experimented with everything that they suggested, I mean, I could be here for 20 years trying to figure this stuff out. So I wanted something a little more objective to me and personalized to me. And so after IIN I listen, I'm making this part up because I don't actually know offhand I would imagine I got another 10, 20% chipped off. So maybe I'm still sitting with 10 to 20% of where I started.
Speaker 1:I'm feeling overall good but, yes, especially under my chin, I definitely had, unfortunately, cystic acne. Still, it just wasn't as prominent on the side of my face which, yes, that did make a good difference. That wasn't just denial. No, you could walk by someone in a store and they can't tell that you have anything under your chin, obviously. So that was kind of nice.
Speaker 1:My next step was I'm fully committed to natural health. Not even a question. I know this works. I just haven't figured out everything yet and that made sense. I was like all right, I just got to keep chipping away.
Speaker 1:So I saved up all the money that I could at. I was working for my parents now at their restaurant and I made like 500, 600 bucks a week total and then I lived with them. So my expenses were very low. But I would go to this naturopathic doctor in my town and it was like $300 for each session, not counting whatever the cost would be for the labs and supplements you recommended. So I mean everything that I'm doing. I'm saving up like a week or two weeks worth of pay just to do one session with this person, and the rest of my food, or the rest of my money, is going to the organic food.
Speaker 1:My parents were happy to buy food for me. They were a little less receptive to buy food that was double the price. That's just how they viewed it. Right Now we're all eating that way, other than my dad. But at the time it was a foreign concept that you pay double for food. That didn't make sense, so, and it didn't taste as good, right, it wasn't all processed and filled with sugar and fat and salt. So my next step was this crazy intuition, if you will, and that's why I say it's like a movie. I do not know how else to say this. This is actually what happened After I worked for my nature path and it didn't really help me at all.
Speaker 1:I got this feeling that I needed to travel to figure this out. So I was in Pennsylvania at the time. I had never left my side of the world. I was always on the East Coast, I was terrified of planes. I never went West and I still was terrified of planes at the time and I got this gut feeling I needed to go to where the hippies were at, and in America the stereotype of where the hippies would be is all along the West Coast, and if they're on the West Coast they're probably laughing right now because they know it's just the truth. Like the stereotype about the Northeast is that we're the a-holes that are super business focused and will curse you out and will road rage. All of that is true. The South is kind of like these really nice people that have humble living styles and they'll fix your freaking tire for you if you break down on the highway. That is also true. I've experienced that.
Speaker 1:So we go out West, we being my best friend and I. He had just gotten done college. He was working at Best Buy, so he wasn't committed to that at all and I convinced him to go with me and we spent three, four months in California, southern California, and I had no idea about anything there. I didn't know anyone there. I didn't know of anyone there. But I started using the app called Meetup it's still a thing to this day the meetupcom app and I searched for different health events. So him and I went to a chiropractor's talk. We went to this talk, we went to that talk and then finally I walk into a talk that was being given by none other than Jen Malecka, and Jen Malecka most people on here would have no idea who that is. It's not like she's famous, but Jen Malecka is a really big deal in the world of FDN. She's one of the reasons that so many people got onto it in Southern California, along with Reed Davis, the founder. She's been in FDN for over 10 years, has a massively successful business and has helped thousands of people at this point, and she was the one I was lucky enough to hear talk at the health meetup in Southern California.
Speaker 1:I walked in with a business casual shirt that was two sizes too large for me. I looked ridiculous. I had a shaved head, no beard and still some acne. At the time it was quite a scene and I walked up to her afterwards. I mean, I drove out here, I had nothing to fear at this point. So I walked up to her, I told her my mini life story in a 10 minute span and she was so respectful and nice to me and she shared some tips, shared all this stuff, and then she believed that the FDN course would actually be a good fit for me and so she took me out to lunch 2 or 3 days after paid for everything. Just an awesome person Got me on the phone with Reed.
Speaker 1:He was the salesperson at the time, 8 years ago. It was just him and she got me on the phone with him. I called my parents. I said I figured out why I came to California. This is it. And I said you know how? I still didn't go to college. And they're like, yeah, and I'm like, and you know how? Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I mean, that was a little bit less money than you were expecting to spend on me if I went to college, right? And they're like, yeah, and I said, all right, I got one more college thing. It's FDN. And so my mom looks it up, she does the research on it and checks out the website. And then she called me back like a day later and she said okay, you're right, and you have traveled across the country. I mean because it's still weird for her right, like I'm a kid to her in a sense and I haven't made actually great decisions in my life up into that point, and so she's just like I don't know. I trust this. I think this makes sense. I think this is what you need and have been looking for. And they paid for that course too, and so they bought FDN for me and the rest is history. And now I host the freaking podcast for that company almost 400 episodes in and that's where I say it's like a movie.
Speaker 1:The idea that a gut feeling is what led me to drive across the country because, remember, I'm too scared to fly, so I had to convince my friend to drive with me. Wow, we have twelve hundred dollars total and we just somehow figured out how to scrap along there. We're doing delivery stuff for food services, which we couldn't have done if we didn't take the car anyway, and somehow I met the most perfect person to me in that thing that has now led to these opportunities. I mean, you couldn't. I couldn't write it any better. It's as cool and epic as it could be. So that is what I did.
Speaker 1:I got into FDN. I did the labs that are included with the course. I started getting that objective, personalized data that I needed and despite all these diagnosed conditions, despite the blood work that Western medicine would do on me, they still said there's nothing that we can do. Well, I go to FDN my hormones are tanked, my guts trashed, my liver's backed up. You know I'm not breaking down protein the way that I should. I have food sensitivities.
Speaker 1:In fact, every foundational lab that FDN ran, I had many things wrong with me and it might sound weird. If, again, you're not used to this stuff I mean, again, if you're listening to a podcast like this I would assume you're pretty open to holistic. But still it can sound weird for some people to be like why is this guy sounding almost happy about all this stuff that was wrong with him? It's because I already knew something was wrong with me. I've been walking around for years sick. I'm not an idiot. I could have told you something's wrong. The problem is, no one could tell me what was wrong, and so the data was actually something to rejoice in, because when you look at your labs and they're trashed, yeah, on one hand that sucks, but on the other hand it's validating. It's not in my head, I'm not crazy. I'm looking at it on paper and I'm seeing the many things that have gone wrong with my body. Now you might not rejoice if there's nothing that you can do about it, but thank God the training tells us what to do about it.
Speaker 1:So I started embarking on that journey. I got into that and that got me to about 90%, maybe even 95%. The last five to 10% for me, though. Not to segue into a whole separate topic, but it was actually light and circadian biology that was the final straw for me that really solidified that I can walk around and say, hey, if I stress my body to the max, sure I get a mini pimple. I do not even know what I would have to do at this point to actually get a legitimate cystic pimple. I just do not get them anymore. It does not happen. I could be off my routine for a week or two weeks and it wouldn't happen, and that's how I know real healing has occurred.
Speaker 2:So I'm just guessing that there's possibly people listening to this. They've got acne and they're screaming out, but what did you actually do? So you got your labs done, so your liver was backed up, your gut wasn't good, your hormones were all over the place, so what were the things that you did to get those back into balance?
Speaker 1:And listen, I think you'll get this out of respect for the audience. I will give specifics where it is applicable to everyone. But, as we know, some of the lab stuff like you even mentioned a mercury thing, right, or heavy metal detox the bottom line is we don't necessarily know exactly what's in this person until we run the tests. Yes, when you work with clients of a certain base, you can start to guess certain things. I fully get that. But I'll give them the specifics where I know that they can apply it and it's totally safe, and I'll give a high-level overview where it could be different for them. So high-level stuff. Let's start with that gut things. I had a bacteria, a bacterial infection, if you will. I had a parasitic infection as well. I needed to address those things, those particular strains of bacteria, those particular strains of the parasite. They get addressed and treated, if you will, self-treated in a certain way. That's why I'm not just recommending things generically. So I had to do the protocols for that things generically. So I had to do the protocols for that. I had to be very specific about how I re-inoculated, if you will, my healthy gut bacteria. So I used spore-based probiotics. I feel like that's safe enough to stay, things like Megasport Biotic Biocide and now has one now called, I think it's like Preflora 4R or something like that, but it's pretty good. I like that one as well and those things helped. I also removed the food sensitivities. That was highly personal, obviously, but I removed those and that was probably one of the best things I ever did for my health. My mom and I both have a non celiac gluten sensitivity that is measured on tests, and just removing gluten for that extended period of time and I still remove it now that worked absolute wonders. Other specifics this is probably don't miss this one, but I wish I kind of did this back at 18. I think this would have had one of the most dramatic impacts, but I found it last.
Speaker 1:Light and circadian biology. Every morning I catch the sunrise, I wake up with the sun and I start resting as it gets darker. So for me and listen if I'm on a podcast, that's a few times a week thing is for an hour or so. Yes, I also do what we're doing here and I will end up staying out in the dark for a little bit. But, generally speaking, what my normal schedule is when that sun sets, my blue light lock blockers go on, the lighting in my room changes, the lighting on my screens change and I try to get to bed at a normal time. That was one of the biggest health hacks and the reason it's such a health hack. If you get outside in the morning one, you're getting free red light from the sun, because the sun is the original red light. I love red light therapy. I have panels, I'm all for it.
Speaker 2:You obviously don't live in the UK, Right?
Speaker 1:right, the original red light therapy was the sun. Anytime you see that sun, about 42% of the light that's hitting you is near infrared and red light, so that is very beneficial to your skin. So if you're out there, you're already helping yourself. But the bigger thing is this You're out there, you're already helping yourself. But the bigger thing is this when your circadian rhythm is optimized, your body works as nature or God intended. If you look up and this is where you got to be a little bit more big picture with it when you look up any health condition cancers, autoimmune, diabetes, sleep issues and you look it up, are the words night shift. Afterwards you will find in scientific journals that night shift is worse for almost every single health outcome.
Speaker 1:Now, what is the opposite of night shift? It's living in a diurnal rhythm. A diurnal is the opposite of nocturnal, right? So when I see those studies on night shift, I find that they're so profound because it's like OK, well, the night shift stuff still kills people, literally and figuratively, even if they're getting eight hours of sleep each night. So then this again I'm not a scientist, I'm not a PhD, but my logic with that was well, the opposite then must be true.
Speaker 1:So what's the opposite of night shift? It's living in alignment with the sun. That's what our bodies were designed to do. So, when your body starts operating better, yes, there are supplements that you can take for detoxifying certain things. And if you've been sick for a while like to your point about the heavy metal detox, no, that can be very important to do an intentional detox because you've been building up for years. But if my my body's a natural detoxifying system, if you didn't detox your body every day, all day, every day, especially during sleep, you would have been dead, like your first week here on this earth. We couldn't handle all the stuff that we consume and get into our bodies. So we are a detoxifying machine. So if I am optimized to work better, because I have the right food, because my sleep's nailed down, because I actually restore when I sleep, then my natural detoxification abilities become better.
Speaker 1:And so that's why I think, still now I mentioned you know, could I get a little small breakout here and there? Yes, I can. In fact, if I travel a lot, you can't see it on the camera, but I have a little one right now just because I've traveled for the last three weeks, I'm hopping time zones. I went to California, then Miami, then Salt Lake City, utah, and the results a little breakout. I'll take that that's a pretty good jump for me in terms of health outcomes and what I'm able to do now, but that kind of stress will push me towards there. But I'm thinking and saying like how on earth could I do all that stuff now when I couldn't do that before? And the reality is my body's working better 95% of the time, so when I do put those stresses on it, it's able to handle it.
Speaker 1:So if I could give very clear action steps specifically to people that I believe are advisable to anyone with any health issue, not just acne, but especially with acne, you got to figure out the circadian rhythm side, and these are the things that, again, people aren't necessarily you know we talked about it aren't necessarily willing to do. Sometimes, maybe you're in a position that you're not able to do it. If you want to heal this stuff, naturally, I promise you one of the fastest ways you will be able to do that is learning to live in alignment with how nature is designed. The more time you can spend outside, the better. Very important, though, is, in the early morning, letting your body know that it's morning, and then, also important is letting your body know that it's nighttime when it is dark. That is how you optimize the sleep. That's really what we're trying to do there. And when that's optimized, man, your body works like a well-oiled machine.
Speaker 1:It was intended to do that, and humans can handle quite a bit of stress. If that wasn't true, we wouldn't have 7 billion people here right now. Like, we're pretty damn good at being resilient, actually, despite how weak we might seem compared to like a tiger or something. Right, we can handle stress. We're pretty good at it, but we have so much stress in today's world that's why it seems like we can't. So, yeah, those would be my specific stuff.
Speaker 1:You got to get data to figure out what's going wrong with you. But if you can't do that right now eating whole foods that are organic and making sure that your sleep is in check you say, well, that can't be that simple right? Yeah, you missed the last part. The last part is keep doing that over and over and over again every single day that you can for months, and then tell me that you didn't get a lot better at the end of those few months. It didn't take overnight to get sick. You're not going to get well overnight, but the good news is, if you put in the work to get well with those months and years, then it takes just as long to get you sick again and you're going to have some flexibility back in your life and some freedom.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So just to summarize, and again, I think we're both trying to make it clear that, regardless of what you did, that doesn't mean that someone else is going to get the same result by doing the same thing. We've all got different root causes and the way we go about solving our root causes is going to be different from person to person. I don't think I've ever helped anyone with acne in the same way as someone else with acne. I've helped many, many people with acne. I don't think I've ever, you know, suggested exactly the same things to different people. So just to summarize what you were saying so, first of all, you started eating exclusively organic food. No real other change other than that you got a lot of lab tests run so you had an idea of what was going on internally. There was an issue in the gut, you had parasites, you had bacterial overgrowth, your liver was backed up, your hormones were out of balance. You mentioned some things that you did to help address the gut. In terms of probiotics, did you do anything specific to help the liver?
Speaker 1:I think at the time the main I remember using thorn liver cleanse too and again, is a supplement isolated like that going to do that much? No, but what's interesting is and I'm sure you experience this as well when you start getting to those last percentages five percent, ten percent and you're like, oh my gosh, I just got to get this last thing. There was probably a three month period where thorn liver cleanse two or whatever it's called, something weird like that that supplement was truly the difference between me having extra oil on my skin and a little bit of breakouts near my chin, and not If I took it consistently. It didn't happen. If I stopped taking it consistently, then within a week they'd start to come back. So it's so funny how the supplements are supplemental. They're supportive, they really can support you.
Speaker 1:Most of us have so many other issues going on. You would never actually notice a lot of the stuff from the supplements. But when you start to do the real foundational work and you put in your time, you actually do notice these differences with supplements. So that was probably in terms of direct things that I use to help deliver. That was probably one of the main ones and I did.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I overdid this. I don't. I don't know if I overdid this. I used a lot of binders at the time because I also noticed that when I took the binders, I seem to be able to get away with like a little snack here and there, or that. If I had a particularly stressful day, it didn't seem to be able to get away with like a little snack here and there, or that. If I had a particularly stressful day, it didn't seem to end up on my skin. Um, I, I do think I overdid the binders looking back and probably, you know, develop some nutrient deficiencies because of that that I needed to restore from. But I think binders have their time and place when they're used appropriately as well, and that did help yeah, yeah, just just for the audience.
Speaker 2:Binders are things that you take um in the body. They bind the toxins and they help you excrete toxins from from your body. Um, when you say you overdid it, what, what? I mean what binders were using and kind of, how much were you using, you know?
Speaker 1:at that time it was exclusively activated charcoal for the most part. Um, I did end up doing GI detox by biobotanicals eventually, which has a combination of a few things in there, and the overdoing it's just a hunch. It's because I would end up taking multiple scoops throughout periods of the day where I wasn't eating or something I had an empty stomach and really I know that serving sizes on supplement packages are not perfect, but if I actually looked at what I was taking, I mean it was probably five to 10 times the recommended amount, and it was fairly often and I think it was overkill. And charcoal has been used for thousands of years. So that's great and all.
Speaker 1:But I didn't understand at the time the difference between worthy anecdotes and scientific evidence. And what does that mean? Worthy anecdotes are things that come up all the time in the holistic space and you start to see patterns that are working for people, and so I think there's meaning to that and I do think we should learn something from that. But the problem is I didn't fully understand that just because a bunch of people were saying something worked like I didn't know how to read a scientific study. At the time I had no idea that there were products that made it to the market that really there weren't any studies on, but people just promoted it to be amazing. Now I'm not saying that's the case with charcoal.
Speaker 1:Charcoal is even used in hospitals, sometimes for alcohol poisoning and in very, very high doses, stuff that you would never recommend for acne or any other health condition. It's literal poisoning, right, that is trying to save you from, but I did not know that in reality there are no, you know, long-term studies showing what happens to people that I know of when you take charcoal in excess every single day for multiple years. And the reason that there's not studies for that is because no one in the Western medicine space is even thinking that way. And you have to have the funding for this study. You have to have the participants so understand, something can likely be good and it's probably okay, but science does matter in a sense, and science also gets fabric fabricated.
Speaker 1:So it's a very complicated thing and I I just I try to be careful now, so my overdoing. It is not based in objective reality where I can say, oh, this definitively affected, affected me, but it is based off a hunch and the only slight piece of objective data that I might have. For that is after I did an HTMA test, a hair tissue mineral analysis, later in the game for me, um, my metals were overall pretty good, but my minerals were tanked. I was in a four lows pattern which is basically just bottomed out, your your body's, exhausted. Could that have been true years ago? It could have been because I already felt exhausted and terrible. I don't know, but I have a hunch that that affected those nutrients. So that's what I meant by that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, did you ever use infrared sauna?
Speaker 1:Not at that time. No, I ended up using it a lot in the last two to three years, but I already felt a lot better when my wife and I had what we called a light therapy studio, which had red light therapy, vitamin D lamps and infrared sauna. We literally owned one, so we were doing it all the time. I have a membership now where I live in North Carolina that actually allow. This is a great price $200 a month, unlimited cold plunge sauna, private sessions for an hour. So we have a membership there now and oh and, you can interchange it with your spouse or like a friend, so she can go, sometimes without me, I can go without her, we can go together same price. And so I'm using it more now.
Speaker 2:But I don't know if that helped me a lot, only because I felt a lot better by the time I started using it. Yeah, yeah, and I asked because I've seen a lot of benefits for people with acne using infrared saunas on a regular basis, and I know I still. I have an infrared sauna at home and I use it twice a week and my skin always just feels amazing. It's just like it's the cherry on top of the cake. It's not, you know, it's not.
Speaker 1:It's not the magic bullet solution for everybody, but it helps because, well, that's a perfect example, though, of what we were talking about. Right, that's a worthy anecdote. There's no and you know this and you're not claiming this there's no peer-reviewed literature that says infrared saunas are good for you know, your skin, or that it helps acne, but a lot of people that I know have had a similar sentiment. I mean, they've had similar sentiments for a variety of health issues with saunas, not to mention whether it's dry sauna, sauna or even a steam room type of sauna. It based, uh, what it does with your skin.
Speaker 1:I feel like I look so much better for a few hours afterwards, just because it kind of it makes your skin glow, almost so, like you said, if nothing else, just using it for a little extra help or, you know, as a icing on the cake or a topping. Um, that makes total sense to me. So hopefully we find out later that it does stuff with that. These infrared saunas do seem to benefit people heavily. Um, but then the question is this well, is twice a week good? Is seven days a week too much? Is two days, or two times in one day too much?
Speaker 2:we don't know until we get those things in yeah, I mean what we do know, particularly infrared saunas. I mean, you know, the skin is the largest organ of detoxification, right? And you know, one of the things that certainly I I feel is true is that one of the reasons why people get acne is quite often because there is overload on the liver to detoxify. And what's another job of the liver? Well, it's to break down and excrete used hormones as well. And again, there's a massive hormonal component with acne. And if the liver's not excreting toxins, well guess what? The skin's going to try and help out as well, right? So if we can use a sauna regularly, then what we're doing is we're helping to detox the body and that's going to take the load off of all the systems. But, as you say, you know doing it, and again, it's going to differ from person to person, right, it's getting the right amount. Now, I feel for me, two hours a week is is it fits? It fits my lifestyle, and you know I do feel good for it. I don't. I don't ever feel tired or don't feel, um, dehydrated or anything like that, and my skin always seems to be good when I when I use it. So you know that that and I say, I've seen it help lots of other people as well. It's not not just me, and I would say not even just for acne, but for a bit for health generally.
Speaker 2:You know there's so many toxins in our environment today. You know things like using binders and using saunas. They're all going to help, right, they're all going to help to. Yes, we need to avoid toxins as much as possible, but unfortunately, the world we live in today, you can't completely avoid them, right? They're absolutely. They're in the air, they're in our water, they're in our food supply. Even if you eat the best food, you can't completely avoid them, right? They're absolutely. They're in the air, they're in our water, they're in our food supply. Even if you eat the best food you can get your hands on, they're spraying stuff in the sky. Well, that's going to come down to earth at some point, right? So it's impossible to avoid it. So it's worth trying to excrete as much toxins from your body, as much as possible, absolutely so. I think you might have answered my next question, but I'm going to say it anyway, just to kind of help wrap up If someone's listening to this, they've got acne. It could be mild acne, it could be severe acne.
Speaker 1:Where would you suggest that they begin their journey to you know, achieving great skin once again well, I'm not being funny, but I really do mean this I would recommend your book to start right. If you have a guide that skips you through a lot of the bs I mean guys with this condition you have to learn from someone that's actually done it. I don't want to hear theory, I want to know someone else went through this, I want to be able to prove it with the pictures, and then I want to read what they have to say about it. So, even though it's individualized to some degree, I'd highly recommend that they read your book. I'd shout out my own if I had one for it. I don't, so I'd start with that in terms of, okay, I'm not going to read the book, tell me action steps right now. The first thing I'd start doing, like tomorrow. Like tomorrow is how do I wake up with the sun? And then to give some actual steps with this to deal with the troubleshooting that comes with it, because maybe they're going to bed at one in the morning. Right now, they're like dude, I don't wake up with the sun. So this is what I always tell clients You're allowed to wake up to an alarm at sunrise.
Speaker 1:Just set it for when sunrise is. Go out for like 30 minutes. You are perfectly allowed, as far as I'm concerned, to come back in and sleep again. You can go blackout curtains and nap. Now that seems counterintuitive, but here's why I recommend it. I've actually never had. I'm not saying it'll never happen, but I at this time have never had a client that did that routine for 30 days straight that was not eventually able, within like the first two or three weeks normally, to just get themselves waking up on time without needing the alarm. So does it suck the first few times? Yes, if you're going to bed at one and you set an alarm for 6am or 7am and you're waking up to that thing and you got to go walk for 30 minutes and you come back and try to fall asleep to get rest, yeah, no, it's not great for a first few days. It might even stress out the body. But absolutely the pros outweigh the cons and for those that have never given an honest shot to optimizing circadian biology, you will be amazed to find how fast your body shifts.
Speaker 1:There are very good studies on this, showing that people who camp for six or seven days completely fix their circadian rhythm. So if nothing else, make sure you go on a camping trip each year. If you're in a place where you're blessed enough to have it nice enough right now to camp, definitely go do that. So that's one thing. Food quality the reason that the organic probably worked is because, like you said, there is a bunch of toxins in the world. You can't avoid them, that is true. But when you get organic at least you're moving a step forward. So I probably lowered my body's burden on what it had to process. The other thing I would say too is and I didn't mention this yet, I only talked about the light side of circadian biology Well, we do know that food timing optimizes your circadian biology too.
Speaker 1:So a lot of people recommend intermittent fasting and they'll say, hey, we'll wait till 12 or 2 o'clock in the afternoon and then start eating. That's not what the latest science shows is most beneficial. You can look up this guy, sachin Panda I forget what he's a doctorate of, but he has his PhD and he wrote these or did these studies I shouldn't say just wrote. He did these studies showing that intermittent fasting seems to actually work best, especially in regards to the circadian rhythm side, when we eat the bulk of our calories earlier in the day and we stop eating earlier in the day. So I do recommend quote unquote intermittent fasting, but it's counterintuitive to how most people have it, have had it recommended to them, and I especially.
Speaker 1:I know this is so tough. I especially recommend that when it's in the worst seasons, like winter. Dude, if you're three hours into nighttime and you're eating a steak at 7 PM, I mean you are just going to not sleep as well. Uh, a lot of melatonin is produced in the gut. It just doesn't work out the same way. And if you have a tracker, like if you use an aura ring, a whoop or something similar don't take my word on any of this Test it out. Watch what happens when you eat a huge meal you know, two, three hours before bed. And watch what happens when you stop eating when sunset happens and you ate the majority of your calories in the earlier parts or middle parts of the day, your sleep will fly. I mean I've seen people shoot up 10, 15 points in their readiness score and sleep scores from changing this little thing, little. So all that stuff. And then I hate to give you the tough part, but it's all that stuff, and then do it for a long time and the final part. That's kind of it'll seem disconnected from those things because those are like, very, you know, practical. Here's the step for it. The other thing that I would start recommending work on which I'm sure you'd share this idea Understand that there are real sides to acne, in the sense that, yes, acne is not the most attractive thing in the world.
Speaker 1:I don't live in delusion. I don't live on this political side, the far of that political side that says, oh my gosh, you're perfect the way that you are. No, we're attracted to certain things. That is real, especially if you're a dude listening to this, that type of language, you're not going to believe that anyway. So, yes, that's real. At the same time, just because you have acne and, yes, it might not be the most physically attractive thing in the world does not mean that you are of lesser value as a person. That's a whole different thing than being attractive. So stop mistaking a temporary lack of attractiveness. And the truth is, man, I don't want to speak for you. You're a little, especially I'm doing the math when you said 25 years and you're way older than I thought you were. So I'm like this guy looks freaking fantastic. You know what the bottom line is when I got rid of my acne, I realized I ain't a 10 out of 10 anyway. You're only going to get so attractive doing this stuff.
Speaker 1:You need to not equate a lack of current attractiveness, or maybe just not being as attractive as you could be, with a lack of value as a person. And the key there is if I just think I'm not in my most attractive state right now and I do have acne, yes, maybe I'm not going to go on the dating apps right now. I might have to work on that a little bit so that I can have that initial attraction with someone. But what I thought it meant is oh, I should stop hanging out with my friends as well, because I'm so embarrassed.
Speaker 1:My dude friend does not give a crap if I have severe cystic acne, unless we were going to go try to pick up two chicks at the bar or something which I never did anyway. So if I'm just hanging out with them watching a sports game, playing video games, going to the gym, you think he cares that. You know I'm not looking great right now. He's ugly too 90 of us guys are. So please don't equate a temporary lack of attractiveness, which is real and I'm not going to sugarcoat it and say that it's not with a lesser value as a person. That that's insane. That's not the same thing. That's my advice. Yeah, that's a really good point really good point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I like that. That's been put in a really good way, thank you. So, evan, what's what's next for you?
Speaker 1:next for me is I do a lot of business uh, stuff for health coaches actually. So I'm working on that more, just so I have like freedom, remote freedom, with my own stuff. Um, and I also think so many health coaches have these amazing abilities to help people and do not understand the business side well, and thank God, I love the business side and I love researching it and studying it and applying it. So that's big. My other thing, too, is just to continue to grow my speaking brand. I did branch out a little bit. For the first five years of my public speaking career I almost exclusively spoke through this nonprofit, which I am beyond grateful to have spoken for. They are the reason that I have a career with this. But branching out meant I just hired an assistant recently, in October. So she does outreach for me and does a lot of the scheduling and just really taking that to the next level, because speaking for me when I'm on a stage and I get into that zone For me when I'm on a stage and I get into that zone, I can practice that all I want.
Speaker 1:That's not a skill Certain people I think all of us have. What I'm trying to say is, all of us have certain gifts and skills. That one is a skill I'm lucky to have or a gift I'm lucky to have that greatly exceeds any work that I've put in to deserve it. And so the way that my belief system doesn't have to be everyone's my belief system is if God gives you something that works that well, you better go work it and don't waste that. So it's really just dedicating as much time to that as possible, obviously continuing my work at FDN.
Speaker 1:But my FDN works pretty stable. I know my position here, I know my role and I'm helpful to the company and everyone knows their roles and how they're helpful. So that's like a well-oiled machine right now. But I guess you could say it's the same thing as always. Man, really it's not any different, right? It's just continuing to pursue these missions, and until everyone out there knows that these options exist, I'm not going to rest. If someone knows about what we just talked about today and wants to take Accutane, I adamantly disagree with their decision, but I also adamantly support their ability to be able to choose that. So I just think that you should have all the information and I will not stop until people can at least make an informed decision. Whatever decision you make after that, you're a human being and you have a right to make that decision.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, good point. Yeah, I mean, in the last five years, informed consent has been a little bit lacking, shall we say. But yeah, I completely agree. I mean, I'm a big supporter of freedom, but I'm also a big supporter of education and not a supporter of, you know, tyranny and indoctrination. You know there's another saying you know, let truth be your authority, don't authority be your truth. Yeah, right, awesome, great stuff, evan. Thank you so much. This has been a really enjoyable conversation with you, you know, as you know, it's one of my favorite subjects to talk about, but I really hope and I'm sure people listen to this, you know, with acne are going to get a lot from today's episode as well. So just thank you so much for your time and thank you for having me. It was a pleasure. So that's all from Evan and me for this week, but don't forget to join me same time, same place next week on the Radical Health Rebel Podcast. Thanks for tuning in, remember to give the show a rating and a review and I'll see you next time.
