A lifelong concern
When you’re young, you may have pimples or acne. As you get older you may have various rashes and itches, or rough patches on your elbows, or athlete’s foot. After you pass a certain age, here come the wrinkles and skin tags and strange bumps and discolorations. What’s all this about?
What’s outside is inside
The phrase “only skin deep” might lead one to believe that skin problems aren’t connected to the rest of the body, but they are. What shows up on the skin is usually a sign of what is going on with the rest of the body. For the same reason, to truly take care of your skin problem, the rest of the body is involved; it’s not just a matter of putting some sort of cream on your skin. As with all ailments, and as is the philosophy at CAM, let’s look at the root cause.
A summer topic
In addition to any year-round problems you might be having, there are now the additional issues of sunburn, insect bites, and poison oak or ivy. In many skin-related ways, the sun is not your friend. With the hotter weather, more skin is visible, and any skin imperfections are now more noticeable. So summer is a good time to take care of these things.
It could be more serious than you think
Even though the problems seem to be on the surface – after all, your skin is the surface of your body – your skin symptoms could mean more than just a cosmetic problem, so you may need to look deeper.
That odd growth that’s been there for months or years and doesn’t hurt or itch could be skin cancer, although certain kinds of skin cancer, caught in time and treated properly, shouldn’t cause any future problems. You need to get that evaluated, though, and we have an MD on staff at Center for Advanced Medicine who can do just that.
Got rosy cheeks?
Rosacea and lupus can cause pink cheeks in characteristic patterns. Lupus is an autoimmune disease, which means that your immune system isn’t working properly, and it’s important to find out the cause. In fact, allergies and sensitivities, which commonly cause skin problems, are also related to the immune system, so similar treatment approaches can be of benefit.
Nickel allergy
A red, itchy rash where your earrings or rings rest on or enter the skin can mean you have an allergy to the metal nickel. If you have metal dental work other than fillings, such as crowns, braces, or posts, this dental work can contain nickel, which can be causing skin and other problems throughout your body. This dental work may need to be redone to eliminate the nickel.
Eczema and psoriasis
Eczema and psoriasis tend to flare up in the summer. Eczema is a condition in which itchy, scaly rashes develop in patches. It can be caused by allergy, especially to wheat and corn, or to nickel, discussed above. It can also be caused by a yeast overgrowth, which can be controlled by following a yeast-free diet. Psoriasis is similar to eczema, and shows up as itchy, thickened, scaly patches on the skin, usually starting on the elbows, and is considered by some to be an autoimmune disease that can lead to a kind of arthritis. Like eczema, it can be due to allergy. Both conditions can be helped with omega-3 oils such as fish oils.
Athlete’s foot
You don’t have to be an athlete to have athlete’s foot, which is a fungal infection, as is jock itch, and they can occur together. Both of these can worsen along with summer sweating, and both of them are more than just itchy and inconvenient. They can mean that you have a fungus infection that affects your whole body, and may well account for your brain fog, female yeast infections, fatigue, or sugar cravings.
Sugar is fungus’s favorite food, and, once fed, it happily grows and multiplies in those warm, sweaty places. A yeast-free diet deals with the fungus where it actually lives – in your body, not just your feet. This diet is discussed in detail in the book Detox or Disease, available at CAM.
Dry skin
Dry flaking skin and dry peeling lips can be caused by insufficient water or a shortage of beneficial oil in the diet. Using cream, lotion, or lip balm only smoothes down the dead skin temporarily, but adding water or oils to the diet gets to the cause.
Age spots
Age spots tend to show up as one gets older. They are most often found on parts of the skin that receive the most sun exposure, such as the arms, hands, face, and heads of balding men. These are sometimes called liver spots, both for their brownish color and for the fact that toxicity that is more than what the liver can clear out of the body can be partially responsible. Avoid more sun exposure, and clean up your environment and diet of toxins as well as you can.
The cause may be outside, not just inside
Not all skin problems come from the inside, though. You might have a reaction to things that touch your skin, things such as cosmetics, suntan lotion, fabric, or laundry detergent. Or the skin issue can come, ironically, from that cream you’ve been using to try to clear things up. Although the cause of the problem might be on your skin, the solution doesn’t lie in putting something else on your skin to try to fix it. You probably need less, not more, stuff touching your skin.
So what can be done?
Your skin problems should be evaluated by practitioners at CAM who will look at the skin-related symptoms, and at whatever else is going on with you, your blood tests, and your diet. Even if you don’t see a relationship between all these things, they can. They will come up with a treatment plan that really gets to the root cause. You might even come away with more than just your skin problem fixed!
