Your Lifestyle Is Your Medicine
“Your Life Style Is Your Medicine” is a podcast that focuses on how a person's lifestyle can be the key to health and happiness. Routed in the principles of lifestyle medicine, Ed Paget, osteopath, and exercise scientist, interviews area-specific experts on how lifestyle impacts well-being, focusing on purpose, physical activity, nutrition, sleep, and stress, which could lead to a longer, happier life. Edward now runs immersive lifestyle medicine retreats, with the purpose of helping others take back control of their lives to live longer and healthier.
Your Lifestyle Is Your Medicine
Holistic Skincare: Mind-Body Connection with Kerry Jenkins
What if the secret to clear, healthy skin isn’t in a medicated cream — but in your gut?
Kerry Jenkins, a functional medicine practitioner with 25 years of dermatology experience, reveals how our internal health — especially gut and liver function — directly impacts what shows up on our skin.
In this powerful episode, we explore the deep connection between chronic skin conditions like acne, eczema, and psoriasis, and the role of nutrition, hormones, and lifestyle. Kerry shares real stories of patients who found lasting relief by healing from the inside out — not just masking symptoms with prescriptions.
Whether you’re struggling with persistent skin issues or simply curious about how functional medicine works, this conversation will change the way you think about skin health.
🎧 Learn how your skin reflects your inner health — and how simple lifestyle shifts might be the missing piece in your healing journey.
Click here to Watch the Podcast Video.
Welcome to the your Lifestyle is your Medicine podcast, where we do deep dives into topics of mind, body and spirit. Through these conversations, you'll hear practical advice and effective strategies to improve your health and ultimately add healthspan to your lifespan. I'm Ed Padgett. I'm an osteopath and exercise physiologist with a special interest in longevity. Today's guest is Kerry Jenkins. She is a functional medicine practitioner with a specialism in longevity.
Speaker 1:Today's guest is Kerry Jenkins. She is a functional medicine practitioner with a specialism in dermatology. Now, this is an innovative, science-backed approach to treating chronic skin conditions which goes far beyond the traditional methods of topical creams and medications. She combines functional medicine with her nearly 25 years of experience as a physician assistant in dermatology, helping people heal from chronic skin conditions like acne, rosacea dermatitis, eczema, psoriasis and vitiligo. Her practice is called Whisper Health, which she created to offer patients a more holistic approach to healing their chronic conditions. In today's conversation, we talk about the link between skin health and overall mind, body and spirit health, and Kerry shares her passion for helping kids with atopic dermatitis, commonly known as eczema. So check out the show notes for the Ultimate Eczema Relief Guide Natural Solutions for Healthier Skin, which she's been kind enough to share with us. So, kerry, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for having me, Ed. I'm so excited to be here and speak with you today.
Speaker 1:No problems. I'm excited for you to share with our clients what functional medicine is. And then, on top of that, how do you apply that to dermatology? So tell us how you got into this and a little bit more about how that field works.
Speaker 2:So keeping things really simple, because I feel like everything is very complicated. So in its simplest form, functional medicine is really looking at the function of the body. How well is the body functioning right? Is it functioning optimally? Is it not functioning optimally? That's kind of where people get into wellness or illness. So in functional medicine we really look to identify the root cause or the underlying driver of what is perpetuating a chronic disease.
Speaker 2:I have practiced dermatology and I have been in the dermatology clinic for 25 years and I would say the first 12, I was doing the typical churn and burn, you know. I mean I would see eight patients an hour, seven and a half hours a day. I'd be see between 50 and 60 patients a day. Hours a day, I'd be see between 50 and 60 patients a day and there's really not a lot of time allowed for me to make a very personal connection with my patient, much less really dig in and identify what's the root cause or underlying driver behind their chronic skin condition. So it was about 13 years in and the universe has a very magical way of working. I have two girls and my youngest daughter started just complaining of some very vague stomach complaints, like there was nothing wrong. She just wasn't digesting her food well and that made her not feel good and I kind of was put at a crossroads and I had the opportunity to decide okay, am I going to take her to the pediatrician and have a conventional medicine workup done, right, where they would do some imaging, they would maybe do an upper endoscopy or a lower endoscopy, they would label her with IBS and they would give her a prescription, right, and there's nothing wrong with that type of a workup. But I knew deep down in my soul for my child that that wasn't going to get us where we needed to be. So I feel like the universe kind of gave me this opportunity to decide how are you going to manage your own child? And, to be very honest, I didn't do anything for her for a good three months because I didn't know what to do, and that allowed me to kind of get still and really investigate what resonated with me, with me, how I wanted to work her up, and I had the very fortunate I stumbled upon a functional nutritionist that lives in my city and I asked my daughter, who was at that time was 13 years old and you know, 13 year old girls are not easy nuts to crack. But I just said, hey, you know what are your thoughts about seeing a nutritionist? And she's like, sure, let's go see a nutritionist, I don't care, let's go. So I scheduled this appointment and, lo and behold, this functional nutritionist was the catalyst.
Speaker 2:That was absolutely the trajectory changing moment, like once I walked into her office and I saw she had floor to ceiling, wall to wall books on natural health and healing through diet and nutrition and lifestyle. And I was like, wait a minute, what is this foreign concept? Because as a conventionally trained PA, we had one lecture on nutrition. We didn't talk about these things. And when I had this exposure it was like this light bulb went on and it was my pivotal aha moment and I said this is the medicine that I want to practice. And that practitioner was so lovely and just said to me I'm willing to assist you in whatever way I can. Here's some books to get started reading. And from that day forward it's like once you see behind the curtain, like the Wizard of Oz, you can never unsee that. So once I knew there was a whole new world of there's people out there that practice medicine differently, I jumped off the cliff and said I have to be one of those providers, so that's kind of how I got here.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, that is brilliant. It's a similar story to my osteopathy story. I saw physical therapists, chiropractors, you know you name it and then I saw an osteopath once and I was like how many? Years does it take for me to train as an osteopath? Like four years. I'm like okay, what'd I say? And that was it. It was just like that 10 minute thought process in my head.
Speaker 2:That's amazing.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you're going to finish the story about your daughter, though what happened?
Speaker 2:So it was the most incredible visit that I have ever had with any type of medical provider. She essentially sat and spoke with us for two and a half hours. She reviewed my pregnancy with my daughter. She wanted to know about medications, antibiotics. She wanted to know about my daughter's birth history, how that went. Was she born naturally or via C-section, had she been put on antibiotics? And I mean like, the level of detail that she went into was just astounding to me. And ultimately she put us on a modified elimination diet. She wanted Avery to remove gluten and dairy for four to six weeks just to see if it would make a difference for her. And I'll tell you what.
Speaker 2:By the time I, you know like, driving home from that visit, I was like, oh my God, what did I get myself into? How am I going to do this? I've got a family of four that I have to shop for and feed and plan meals, and I have one kid who's going to be gluten-free, dairy-free. How am I going to make that happen? And I just made the executive decision, you know, like, okay, we're all going to be gluten-free, dairy-free, because if she can't have it, nobody's having it, and I had to. You know this is self-preservation. At that point I'm terrified of how I'm going to make it work and I'll tell you like within two to three weeks of her changing her nutrition, she had no complaints. She's gluten sensitive and we just didn't know it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interesting, and just I don't want to go sidetracking the gluten thing, but do you think someone who's gluten sensitive can become less gluten sensitive with sort of gut strengthening or gut health improvements?
Speaker 2:It's a good question and my answer is some people might be able to, but the real truth is is that the gluten that is grown in the United States is genetically modified, it has been hybridized and it is completely saturated in glyphosate, which is weed killer. So the protein of wheat has been completely changed. It's genetically hybridized and it's genetically modified and our body, when we eat it, does not understand. It looks at it as a foreign protein and says what is this? We don't recognize this. Is this a toxin? What is it? So our bodies are not capable of processing the wheat that we are growing in this country.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to go out on a limb and say most people are gluten sensitive and they just don't know it. And it shows up in individuals in different ways. For my daughter, she had maldigestion, she would belch, she had gas, she had bloating and she actually got a little bit dyslexic, like if she would eat a heavy gluten load and she would sit down and try to read like the letters would flip on her. So it caused neuro inflammation for her and as soon as we took that out, all of it went away. So I think there are probably people who, with a lot of gut support could potentially eat gluten, but with all the weed killer that's on it, I don't think it's healthy for anybody.
Speaker 1:No, I agree, I'm from the UK originally and I moved over to Canada and I remember first coming over, we used to hire osteopaths from Europe and other countries, because Canada didn't have any really homegrown osteopaths at the time. And this French lady came over and she was practicing with us for about two or three months. She was like what is it with everyone's digestional complaints here? And we had this big discussion and we were like it's the wheat. And she's like no, it can't be. Everyone in France eats wheat. You know, this is ridiculous. And then we were like okay, it's the hybridization or it's the glyphosate, like you say. And so I went sort of relatively you know, gluten light. I wouldn't eat it as much as I used to and I come down. I now live in Nicaragua, in Central America, no problems, absolutely no problems. And so this is why I was like wondering whether you could, you know, strengthen your gut. But I think in America and Canada we're struggling against the other stuff that's in the gluten as well.
Speaker 2:That's right. That's right. There's no way to get around it.
Speaker 1:No, it's frustrating for sure. Yeah, initiation, so to speak, into the world of functional medicine. But you had this background in dermatology, so you had to then put the functional medicine nutrition aspect and think, well, how can you use that for dermatology? How did you do that?
Speaker 2:So it's kind of funny because when I first started studying functional and integrative medicine, I thought, okay, I'm just going to treat skin because that's my wheelhouse, that's what I'm comfortable, that's what I know backwards and forwards and inside and out. And I very quickly was enlightened that you can't just do that, you can't just say I'm only going to treat skin, because really the skin is a direct reflection, it's a window that expresses on the outside what's going on on the inside. So if your digestion and your gut is a mess, your skin is going to be a mess. So I thought, okay, I want to treat skin, so I have to become a master at treating the gut. Right, so I become a master at treating the gut, and then, lo and behold, I have to come to understand that the immune system is integrating with the endocrine system, which is integrating with the digestive system. And I thought, okay, so I have to become proficient in endocrinology and immunology and gastroenterology, just so that I can practice dermatology. So I thought, okay, I can do that.
Speaker 2:And then you know, once you get that education, then you understand that in the field of immunology there's all kinds of microbial threats, tick-borne disease, environmental exposures like mold and mycotoxin, and you have to learn about all of that, because the person that comes and sits in front of you that has psoriasis or eczema may have had a tick bite or they may have had mycoplasma exposure or something. So it kind of snowballed for me, thinking I'm just going to practice this little tiny specialty niche. No, that's not really how it works. You have to learn how to treat the whole person, everything about the person. So you know, now, six years in, I'm like, no matter what you have, come on, I got you covered, we can handle it.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:And so, with your practice going as far as it's gone, where's your area of interest now? So I've been really focusing the last several months on targeting moms of little kids. We treat both children and adults in our practice little, little, little kids. We treat both children and adults in our practice. But I really feel like the world is starting to become more aware that there is there are other options for treatment. It doesn't just have to be conventional medicine. People are starting to wake up and understand more about, you know, ayurveda, andupuncture and osteopathy and craniosacral and chiropractic and all of these amazing adjunctive therapies that help a human body. I think the awareness is rising and people are wanting more natural alternatives to be able to treat, especially their young kids.
Speaker 2:So these moms that have these babies that are covered head to toe with eczema and you know they're scratching so substantially that their skin is bleeding and nobody in the house is able to sleep because the baby's up and crying and miserable, and they go to the pediatrician and the pediatrician offers them a topical steroid and they use it and the eczema gets better, and then they take the topical steroid away and then the eczema flares up again and then the pediatrician says, well, now I need to send you to dermatology because I don't know what else to do. And these moms will take these kids into the dermatology practice and the provider will say, straight out of the gate, we need to put your child on Dupixent, which is a immunosuppressant, biologic medication. And a lot of these parents are like whoa, you know, my child is nine months old, I'm not putting them on a biologic drug that's going to suppress their immune system for the rest of their life. Like that just doesn't make sense. There has to be a better way.
Speaker 2:So I think the shift is starting to happen and people are have a certain level of awareness that, okay, the dermatologist recommended this immune model, immune modulating medications, but I don't have to do that. I can research and see if there's anything else available. So that's really. I'm just trying to bring awareness and let moms know, listen, you know there are other choices. There's other things that we can do to help that baby heal naturally.
Speaker 1:And why don't you think conventional dermatologists think like this?
Speaker 2:it's not their fault, first and foremost. There's no judgment. Their education is not set up to dedicate the time that it takes to learn about nutrition and food being medicine. It's not taught in medical school, it's not taught in DO school, it's not taught in MD school and I think a big part of that and I may be stepping out on a limb here, I hope I don't offend anybody but Big Pharma is dictating what our medical institutions can teach and Big Pharma doesn't want you to know that if you just eat adequate fiber and healthy fats and use food as medicine, that you don't need the drugs. Right? Because medicine ultimately is a business and I don't say that haphazardly, I know that it goes very, very deep.
Speaker 2:But these doctors that really do have a heart for healing people are going to med school and you know it's almost like they're duped. They get in and they're like I'm not healing anybody, I'm just being trained in a protocol how to triage somebody and treat symptoms, that's all. And that's what happened to me. Like 13 years into practice, I had an epiphany where I was like I'm not getting anybody better. It's a revolving door of disease and I keep seeing the same people with the same problems and I'm not making a difference in their life. And then the beautiful universe and Lord gave me an opportunity to look outside my very narrow training and gave me an opportunity that I'm grateful for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Did you get taught this in school where the word quack comes from. Did you get taught this in school where the word quack comes from? We were taught this. So quack is a derivative of quicksilver, which is mercury, and back in the day, in the frontier days, the pharmacists would give their medications direct to their patients, right, and they would cut it with a lot of mercury, or mercury was a common medication. So the people who weren't doctors were called quacks. So the doctors had license to stand in between the pharmacist and the patient and their job was to stop the patients from buying direct from big pharma essentially or small pharma back then and vet small pharma, so that their patients weren't taken advantage of.
Speaker 1:That was the original setup, as I understand it. And then somewhere along the lines, those pharmacists who were small at that time got bigger and bigger and bigger and then sort of flipped the tables a little bit and said, hey, doctors, you're the gateway, so we'll just educate you. Yeah, interesting, okay. So I'm interested from sort of a personal point of view. But this a lot of people have acne and there is definitely a move that I've seen with my clients and patients to move to a more holistic approach to acne house and you know we talk about skin stuff quite a lot and picky eaters, a lot of gluten being eaten, a lot of sugar being eaten and perhaps a little bit of gut dysbiosis.
Speaker 1:So, what is your approach for? Let's start with teenagers with acne, but then also maybe a slightly different case, or maybe it's similar, but women a little bit older with acne as well.
Speaker 2:Those are two demographics that I see a lot of problems with Yep. So acne, again, is a direct representation on the skin, on the external, of what's going on on the inside right. So we think about two systems when we're looking at acne. The first system is the gastrointestinal system systems. When we're looking at acne, the first system is the gastrointestinal system and the second system is the biotransformation or detoxification capacity of the liver. So acne is multifactorial.
Speaker 2:Typically, when we're talking about teenagers, let's just talk about what the typical teenager is eating breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner. How much real nutrition is in their diet? How much fiber? How much dietary fiber are they getting on a daily basis? How many grams of healthy fats are they getting on a daily basis? How many grams of protein are they eating on a daily basis? Your typical teenage person is snacking on Cheetos and they have a Pop-Tart for breakfast and they have school lunch. Don't even get me started to talk about school lunches, what they're feeding our children at school for lunch and then they have the Cheetos or the Doritos for their afterschool snack and they're drinking hop. They have soda and these you know, gatorade with artificial colorings and preservatives.
Speaker 2:And so the amount of nutrition that any given teen is getting on any given day is slim to zero, and I may be exaggerating a little bit, but you understand that. There's just no nutrient density to the food that they're eating. It's processed, it's packaged, it's high in gluten and dairy, which is very inflammatory. There's fillers and food colorings and preservatives and all kinds of toxic products that are in packaged and processed foods. So these kids are not getting the nutrients that they need to run their biochemistry and detoxification is nothing more than biochemistry. You need the basic building blocks of nutrients like magnesium and B vitamins and choline and all of these amazing nutrients that are supposed to come from whole foods in order to run detoxification through our liver, and if we're not consuming those nutrients, your liver's like dude.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to do the best I can with what I have here, but I can't build a Lego building if I don't have the Legos. If I don't have the building blocks, I can't create masterpieces of art. So these kids, when I get them, I, you know their parents are the ones that find me and say I don't want my child to go on isotretinoin or Accutane. Is there a way for us to fix the acne without doing that? And I say absolutely there is. And your child needs to be a part of this conversation, because I'm taking gluten and dairy out of their diet and I need them to eat you know-dense whole foods breakfast, lunch, snacks, dinner and I need them to drink water. And if your child is not going to be willing to do that, then don't waste your time, your finances or my time, because that's what it's going to take. So that's what I see mainly for the teens, for female teens especially, a little more so than male teens.
Speaker 2:The personal care products that these girls are being marketed, you know, on Snapchat and Instagram and all of these influencers. You've got to use this nail polish and this. Our personal care products are full of endocrine disrupting chemicals and that doesn't go without repercussions. There's repercussions for all of that, all the plastic that's in our lives, the microplastics, the endocrine disrupting chemicals, the phthalates, the weed killer, all of that stuff, you know. And they're putting moisturizers and sunblocks and hair care products and their toothpaste and their perfume and their body lotion. Oh, dear God, it's just, it's toxic. So you add all of these toxic layers, you know, in personal care products onto an already struggling liver. Who's trying to process all of these chemicals that are coming in from the air we breathe, the water we drink, the toxic chemicals we put on our skin, the foods that we're eating. If the liver isn't given the nutrients it needs to do its job, and we just keep overloading it, what do you think is going to happen? So that's how I look at it, for teens going to happen.
Speaker 2:So that's how I look at it for teens. For adults it is still a gut liver issue. There often is history of multiple antibiotics for an adult, and when you have somebody who has been given antibiotics for whatever reason, it does create that dysbiosis in the gut. Candida can overgrow, you can have all kinds of unwanted microbes that are opportunistic and want to take over. So it's that dysbiosis and that enhanced intestinal permeability that really get that inflammatory cascade up and running, and that's where adult acne comes from. More so. And then the adult skincare products. Like an adult female uses something like 40 some products every morning before they're on their way out to work Like it's insane and nobody's out there talking about the level of toxicity that's in your everyday moisturizer, your everyday sunscreen, your everyday makeup. We've got to start building awareness about all of this.
Speaker 1:And what would you do for someone with PCOS? For those who don't know, that's polycystic ovarian syndrome and it can dysregulate a female's hormones.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we really dive deep into those endocrine disrupting chemicals when we're talking about polycystic ovarian syndrome, because that is the number one endocrinopathy in reproductive age females and for females that are infertile and they're struggling with falling pregnant. Pcos is the number one reason why we have such high levels of infertility in our country. So we really dive deep into the personal care products, the products that we're bringing into our home. You know counter cleaners. How do we clean our ovens? What is our laundry detergent? What are we using in the dishwasher? What are we using to mop our floors with? Like I mentioned, the personal care products. So we're really diving deep into the level of toxicity that we're bringing into our environment.
Speaker 2:And then, realistically, polycystic ovarian syndrome is a metabolic dysregulation. It's a problem between balancing glucose and insulin. Often these women are a little bit overweight. They carry the weight around their middle, which is a direct indication that their cortisol levels are high. There's some sort of metabolic stress that's happening and that could be due to a food sensitivity. It could be due to the overburdening of all of the toxins in their body that they just can't process and offload effectively. Again, it all comes down to the food you know most of these women are eating fast food, junk food, prepared food and they're not getting that nutrient density that their body needs to run their biochemistry optimally. So we're really looking from a metabolic standpoint glucose, insulin and cortisol and then really looking at those endocrine disruptors.
Speaker 1:What tips do you have for someone who's grown up, or maybe a teenager who's grown up being a kid I'm thinking of my teenagers and doesn't like eating a wide variety of vegetables? Uh, okay with fruits, but not so much the vegetables. This is a pattern I see as well. It's like when I talk about eating healthy, um greens and getting a nice color of the rainbow spectrum a lot of people are like how do you do it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't. You know, tough love Like I when I sign people on for my program. This is what I'm going to request that you do. If you don't think you're going to be capable of doing this, then let's just not even get started. I need I mean, I give my kids, kids and adults. I give them a fiber goal every single day. You have got to eat 35 grams of fiber every single day. Where does fiber come from? It comes from fruits and vegetables. So vegetables were put on this planet for a purpose. They were intended for you to consume them. You must eat vegetables, dark green leafies, the color of the rainbow. That's where all the polyphenols and the anti-antioxidants and all of those amazing yummy things that come. That's where we get it. So, tough love, man. I just tell them you got to eat your fruits and vegetables. You can't just have fruit. You got to have vegetables and you got to have between six and nine servings a day. It's not a little bit. You've got to eat a lot of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I 100% agree. It is tough love, isn't it? You just have to make it happen. It's tricky. So we've covered acne to a certain degree. Policies to ovaries Can you give me some examples of patients in your clinic you've had sort of always like the remarkable ones, the remarkable turnarounds where you know someone's had eczema their whole life.
Speaker 2:Have you got anything like that that springs to mind? I do. Actually I had a young. He was an adult, he was mid-30s and he actually flew to see me from South America and he struggled with pretty severe eczema his entire life and he couldn't figure out what was going on. And he was a relatively healthy individual, had a very wide, diverse diet, but he just wasn't able to rein it in.
Speaker 2:So we actually do diagnostic testing for our atopic dermatitis and our eczema people. I do a very basic blood panel and our eczema people. I do a very basic blood panel. I'm looking at nutrient sufficiency like vitamin D, vitamin A, zinc, iron. And then I do a comprehensive diagnostic stool analysis where we're taking a look inside that gut microbiome to see if there is any dysbiosis opportunistic dysbiosis or insufficiency dysbiosis. I also want to know about that. So we actually we do testing to give us the data to let us know where we are, what do we have and what do we need to address.
Speaker 2:And I was able to put him on a program and I would say his body surface area was probably 60 to 70% covered with eczema. He just had patches, you know, not on his face, but on his neck, his torso, his, his arms, his legs, his, his belly. We were able to put him on a program and within four months his skin was 90% clear. And he basically said this is nothing short of a miracle. And I was like, no, it's really not. We just gave your body what it needed, we took away what it didn't like, and your body's always looking to reach that homeostasis, that balance, and we just gave it a little bit of help. That's all we did. But he was able to implement the plan and work the plan and his body responded beautifully. And that's what we see Adults, children. It's not magic, it's not voodoo. We do what needs to be done and we see great results. It's very rewarding.
Speaker 1:So if people listen to this, they might know someone or maybe themselves who has eczema and I know each case is individual. But what was that person doing that was perpetuating the problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't think it was anything they were doing currently. They had a history of pretty severe funny enough acne. And how did they treat acne? Well, they gave antibiotics. Well, what do antibiotics do? They kill all the good flora, right.
Speaker 2:So when we did his blood work, we did see that there were some nutrients that his body needed more of. So we were providing those nutrients. His diet was pretty good. When he came in we opened it up a little bit more. I gave him a fiber goal, I gave him a protein goal.
Speaker 2:But it was really his history of taking antibiotics for pretty severe acne as an early adult, like in college, that really disrupted his entire gut microbiome. And when we did that stool analysis we were able to see oh my goodness, we're colonized with yeast, we've got overgrowth of many different species that we don't want to have overgrown. So we just did some gut microbe rebalancing, I like to say, and within four months time, you know, we also put him on some liver support. We gave him B vitamins and magnesium and zinc all the things that your liver needs to be able to biotransform optimally and get rid of the stuff that it doesn't want to keep around. Um, his, his eczema just cleared up Like it was beautiful. We healed his gut and we supported his liver and his skin cleared his gut and we supported his liver and his skin cleared.
Speaker 1:That is amazing and I think that's the takeaway right. There is, if you can heal a person's gut, you can heal almost everything else in their body, especially when it comes to autoimmune type problems.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Let's go the other way around now. So as we age, as I'm beginning notice myself, uh, this my skin is beginning to show signs of, you know, sun damage. I've got that academic keratinosis thing on my head because I've been bald since I was 17. What do you do for people who don't necessarily have a uh like a problem from the inside out, but it's a problem with their you know just the way they took care of their skin or too much sun damage or age, age related stuff. Is that something that your clinic works with as well?
Speaker 2:Not so much. You know skin cancer or the actinic keratosis, which are the precancers that that come out, the rough, red, scaly little little spots. Those are a direct result of substantial UV exposure over a long period of time. So if you grew up in an area and you were athletic and outdoors and had a lot of time outside, that damage from that UV radiation is done deep in the dermis and then over time as you mature that damaged skin is coming to the surface and that's why you know, by the time you hit 40, you start seeing all these, these little things. So there's no way for us to go back and undo that damage.
Speaker 2:Reds, orange, yellows, greens, blues, blacks, purples those foods are full of natural antioxidants and really the actinic keratosis is really just oxidative damage that was done to your skin from UV radiation. So if you have a really healthy, balanced diet and you're eating good colored foods and getting those antioxidants, there's also many supplements that you can take. You know vitamin E is an antioxidant, vitamin C is an antioxidant. So just basic supplements that you can take to help off. You know antioxidants help reduce oxidative damage, right, and that's what's done. So you know balancing that oxidative stress and that oxidative damage with antioxidants is what we recommend, just to keep people from having premature wrinkling or aging of the skin or those precancerous lesions.
Speaker 1:That's obviously a hot topic as we get older. So do you think that the skincare products people put on their skins that contain collagen or the latest fancy whatever it is, do they do anything? Or is it more from the inside out that the best work can be done for the wrinkles?
Speaker 2:From the inside out. For sure, you know topical things are going to help plump the epidermis. Things like hyaluronic acid are great. Topical vitamin C is an antioxidant. Again you know kind of off balancing that oxidative damage. So that's good. But really it needs to come from the inside out.
Speaker 1:Okay, hey, while I've got you, I want to ask you another question. I had a bit of a discussion with a patient of mine as a dermatologist. We were talking about magnesium, um, epsom bar, epsom bath salts and magnesium oh, yeah, she was adamant that it would have no difference, nor no change on the inside of the body. She I said to her that I thought that the skin was a semi-permeable membrane and that if you soak in them long enough, you're going to absorb some magnesium.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. We use transdermal. I use transdermal medication all the time. Epsom salts are a beautiful resource for the body to absorb magnesium and sulfur, and sulfur is required for good detoxification. So I'm going to just very kindly disagree with her opinion. I use Epsom salt baths for my patients all the time to help get that detoxification going, because they're absorbing magnesium and the sulfur from the salts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was, that was my opinion, because I had a few patients who tried it and they actually got an upset stomach and I was like huh an upset stomach is a sign that you've had too much magnesium.
Speaker 1:So I was like I was like, oh, that's interesting, it goes in. And this, this lady was like no, no, impossible. And I was like, oh, okay, uh. But then I did talk to her about hormone patches and I was like, really, because if you think nothing goes through the skin, how does a hormone patch work? I kind of got that one but yeah, interesting.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:So can you tell us a little bit about how people can find out about what you do, and especially that work you do with the kids with eczema, because I think that might be something that a lot of moms listening to this might be interested in seeking your guidance.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. I'm a PA and I'm licensed in the state of Florida and Georgia, so I'm licensed to practice in those two states. Our website and our practice name is Whisper Health and our website is wwwwhisper-healthcom, so they can find us on the website and they can get all the information about how we work up kids that have chronic kids, children and adults that have chronic skin conditions. All of the information is on the website and we do offer a free 20 minute complimentary consultation so that we can get to know one another on the phone and I can answer questions and allow families to kind of get an idea of how we practice and if this type of process resonates with them and is a good option for them.
Speaker 1:Okay, and the internet being the internet, this will be up for, hopefully for a long, long time. So in the future, do you have any plans for any online courses or anything like that?
Speaker 2:I do have a course that's in the works. It is geared towards polycystic ovarian syndrome. I'm not sure what the release date is going to be for that at this time. Right now we are focusing more on the chronic skin conditions. So any type of chronic skin condition we are treating more naturally and holistically. And you never know, there may be more programs in the works in the future.
Speaker 1:Well, Kerry, thank you very much for coming on the show. This has been very insightful and a pleasure talking to you.
Speaker 2:You as well. Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining me in my conversation with Kerry. If you've enjoyed listening to this and learning from the podcast, please leave a comment, and you can also leave a suggestion for a future podcast guest that you might like us to feature. If you're on Apple, you can go ahead and leave us a comment, maybe even a five-star review, if you're so inclined. You know my job with this podcast is not necessarily to be the next Huberman, although that would be nice. Mainly, it's to build up a repertoire of podcasts that I can refer to people when they need them. So, for example, this episode I'll be referring to people if they have eczema or acne or polycystic ovaries, and I'd like you to do the same. So think of someone who you might know who could benefit from this podcast and share it with them. That's all I ask. Remember, if you want my direct help, you can send me an email, ed at edpadgettcom, or you can visit my website, edpadgettcom, and we can discuss whether or not we can help you make your lifestyle your medicine.