The Link Between Genetics and Eczema with Dr. Kendra Becker

Trevor:             Hi there. I’m Dr. Trevor Cates. Welcome to the Spa Doctor Podcast. On today’s podcast, we’re discussing eczema, genetics, and a naturopathic approach. My guest is Dr. Kendra Becker. She is a naturopathic physician, practicing for over 10 years. She is Connecticut’s four A specialist. The four As stand for: asthma, autism, allergies, and atopy, which is also eczema.

Trevor:             Dr. Becker is adjunct faculty at two prominent universities and was recently chosen as one of Connecticut’s top naturopathic doctors. Dr. Becker is the author of A Delicious Way to Heal the Gut, and has a brand new book that just came out. On today’s podcast, we discuss the most common genetic markers seen in children and adults with eczema, and how to address these to improve eczema. We also cover what sign eczema is for other health conditions, what other health conditions are often associated with eczema, and how to treat them. Please enjoy this interview.

Trevor:             Kendra, it’s great to have you on my podcast. Welcome.

Kendra:            Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Trevor:             Today we’re talking about eczema. That’s something that you work a lot with in your practice, have a lot of experience with so I wanted you to come on the show and talk about this because there’s so many people that struggle with eczema, both kids and adults, and there is a connection with genetics that I think a lot of times people think there’s nothing they can do about it, “My family has it.” But actually, we now know there’s a lot we could do to change our genetic expression and not have to suffer with eczema and other conditions that are similar to it, like other atopic diseases. Correct?

Kendra:            Exactly correct. And I think that’s one of the things that really … I love treating eczema. It’s one of my most favorite conditions to treat because I think people come in the office feeling really broken, like they’re going to have to live with this … Eczema’s really painful, and it’s also … the treatment that’s offered in conventional medicine is really palliative, it never gets to the bottom of the cause of the concern to begin with. To be able to have somebody come in the office and say, “Oh let’s do this and let’s do this.” And their condition goes away altogether is completely gratifying.

Trevor:             What are some of the genetic markers that we see in kids and adults?

Kendra:            Okay. The biggest one is, of course, MTHFR, methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase. I’ve been practicing in medicine about 12 years, and I’ve been studying this gene pretty excessively over the last 12 years. As you know, in holistic medicine we have an evolution, a constant evolution of what we’ve learned about the body and what we’ve learned about genetics. This particular gene is a huge example. What we now know, what’s current research is about 60% of the US population is positive for this gene. And why do we care, right? Because it’s a gene that codes for an enzyme that converts folic acid into the usable form of folate, called methylfolate.

Kendra:            Folic acid, as we all know, is synthetic. It’s made in a pharmaceutical lab. It’s a pharmaceutical drug, and the problem is that people don’t have the ability to metabolize that. It’s in most processed foods. It’s in a lot of pharmaceutical medications, and we also find it in our products, the products we use on our skin, the products we use on our hair. I mean, it’s everywhere. For somebody who’s having an enriched or processed product once in a while that’s positive for MTHFR, it’s probably not a big deal. But the problem is, is that we are overloaded with it in our society.

Kendra:            When we get overloaded with anything that our bodies don’t tolerate well, we create inflammation, and basically, eczema is the body’s ability to push the toxicity in the inflammation away from vital organs into an area of the body that is less harmful for its organism, and in this case it happens to be the skin.

Trevor:             Yeah. So this is something that people can test for. How do you recommend people getting tested for this?

Kendra:            Well, there’s a lot. You can do blood with your regular primary care doctor. You can certainly do saliva with just an individual test for MTHFR, or you can do your whole genome through these companies that are now offering whole genome genetic testing. Even though I practice a lot of genetic medicine, looking at the whole genome isn’t abundantly useful. There’s about eight billion genes in the genome, about 8000 of them separate us from apes, and about 800 of them have implications on our health. Looking at the ones that have to do with skin exclusively, or eczema markers or inflammation is even a smaller number than that.

Kendra:            However, when we look at the genetics of an individual and get a really good assessment of where they’re at from an epigenetic standpoint from their environment, that’s really where I think the holistic or the functional medicine or the naturopath can really excel because it’s all of those factors together that really give us a really great idea of how we can help this patient return to homeostasis or balance.

Trevor:             Right. And there are different versions of MTHFR, right? And so with blood work, what do you recommend if people were to talk to their primary care doctor about adding in the tests, is there anything in particular they should request?

Kendra:            Well, it’s interesting that you ask that. I’m here in Connecticut, and there’s two particular genetic mutations regarding MTHFR. There’s C677T, which is a translation from C, and then an A1298C, so it’s a translation from A to C. In Connecticut, at Yale … you know I’m in Connecticut, so at Yale New Haven Hospital they were only testing for the C677T. They weren’t testing for the other one. The rest of the hospitals in Connecticut are testing for both markers. It’s just a really interesting kind of play because most of the research that we’re seeing in allopathic or conventional medicine is regarding the C677T and elevated homocysteine levels, which has nothing to do with what we’re talking about here.

Kendra:            If you go in and just ask your primary care doctor and say, “I’m interested in getting testing for this genetic marker. Could you please add it to my blood work?” I can’t imagine why you would have any trouble or struggles. Then just remind the doctor that there are two different markers and that they should ask for both of them.

Trevor:             Okay. Perfect. Thank you for that clarification on that because I have seen that with people coming in with blood work and they’ve had one test and then we gotta test for the other one to see if that’s there.

Kendra:            Exactly.

Trevor:             And like you said, it’s very common, especially with people. You said it’s 60% of the population, but I’m sure it’s even more percentage of people with eczema that have that genetic … so then what do people do about it?

Kendra:            Right. You know as a naturopath, it all depends on … you gotta meet the patient where they’re at. For me, it generally is a multi-faceted treatment. You always start with diet, and again, that would vary from patient to patient. But as a rule you get rid of anything that’s globally inflammatory. That’s in most cases with my patients, dairy, wheat, corn, and soy to start. Sometimes you have to include an anti-inflammatory diet, which takes out things like nightshades, potatoes, eggplant, those sorts of things. Sometimes it’s a paleo diet. Sometimes you can have patients that are really sensitive to rice, that you’ve done everything else. You helped heal the gut with probiotics, which we’ll talk about in a second, and then all of a sudden you realize they’ve got raging food sensitivities to something like rice or almonds that they are now consuming in all their products.

Kendra:            Diet’s huge. Diet’s probably A number one. For me in my practice, I also use a ton of probiotics because we want to be able to heal and seal the gut. I love specific strain probiotics for different illnesses and conditions. So sometimes for eczema you can use very specific strains of probiotics, not only to help heal the eczema but to reduce bacterial overload, candida, or whatever else that patient is particularly struggling with.

Kendra:            If we’re coming in and these patients have methylation challenge and they have trouble metabolizing their B vitamins or they’re positive for MTHFR or whatever, without having that pathway working properly, clearly your methylation is out of balance, which means your detox pathways are out of balance, which means you’re prone to inflammation. If we can balance the gut, then we know we can optimize the body’s ability to uptake these vitamins and minerals more optimally.

Kendra:            So I tend to be really conservative with supplements. I do love fish oils. I think they’re great, especially for skin, fatty acid struggles, and things like that. And I will use B vitamins in a lot of cases with my patients, largely because I do mostly MTHFR. But you have to be really careful. But as far as eczema, for the most part, as you know, you can heal the gut really, really effectively, and you don’t need topical creams and salves and long-term maintenance and supplement rotations. It’s an imbalance that the body’s kind of screaming at you about and saying, “Help me and fix this.” Then, “Okay, well now I’m good to go. As long as I maintain my diet and maintain my health, I shouldn’t have anymore struggles with this.”

Trevor:             Right. Okay. Then if people just find out, if people don’t have MTHR, the genetic variant, they still … a lot of the things that you’re talking about are still going to be important.

Kendra:            Oh absolutely.

Trevor:             Addressing inflammation and the gut. When you talk about specific probiotics, explain more about that. What do you mean by that?

Kendra:            In the last five years, we have learned more about the microbiome than we did in the 200 years prior. If you follow the research, it’s just absolutely fascinating.

Trevor:             I know. I’m totally geeking out on that stuff, too.

Kendra:            Oh my gosh. Anyway, there are very, very specific strains of probiotics that help with certain things like Lactobacillus gasseri I think is a really good one, and that helps particularly with infant colic. Lactobacillus acidophilus, which is how we learned about probiotics to begin with, helps stabilize the gut. There’s a reason why in the 70s, people went to the health food stores and grabbed the Lactobacillus acidophilus off the shelf. We used it for everything. My grandmother is an Italian immigrant and I remember having canker sores as kids, and we used to put the acidophilus right on our canker sores. It’s the gut. It’s the same tissue.

Kendra:            I think we have to remember or we have the luxury of looking at these very specific strains and using them to really support our patients particularly. And then the other thing, too, is the spore probiotics have really gotten a lot of attention lately. The Bacillus coagulans, in particular, is really great at quelling inflammation and helping heal and seal the gut. I’ve had very good luck with using that with some of my patients with eczema and some other autoimmune stuff that starts in the gut because what we see there is we see a spore. We see the body’s ability to hold on to and host this probiotic so it can replicate an alive state in the gut, which I think is just fascinating. So I’ve had very good luck with that.

Kendra:            But I’ll be happy to provide a link, if you’d like, of a blog with all the specific strains and what they do and what they don’t do, which might be nice for your viewers.

Trevor:             Perfect. Perfect. We’ll put that up on my website below your podcast interview. So we’ll definitely have that up. Thank you for sharing that. I imagine you recommend testing to determine which probiotics are going to be most beneficial.

Kendra:            Most of my practice is pediatrics. A lot of what I do with pediatrics tends to be based on the examination and the evaluation. I try to really avoid using a lot of very expensive or traumatic testing for these young children. And as you know, kids have such a high vital force. Some of it is so clear, from the waiting room. You don’t even need the intake. You can just see that baby. You see what the mom pulls out of the bag for snacks. You can smell the chemicals on their clothes and you’re like, “I know exactly what this is about.” With the pediatric patients, I don’t. I don’t use a lot of testing. With my older patients, or my more complicated cases, I absolutely do. And I look, of course, at the sebum, the dysbiosis, and a lot of the stuff that goes on in stool because that can give us a lot of answers.

Kendra:            But with the little babies I had a case, in fact, last week while I was in Hawaii. I was conversing back and forth with this mom. It was 3AM in Hawaii. It was 9:00 here. She says, “Oh, but the eczema’s getting so much worse.” And she’s sending me pictures and sending me pictures. And I said, “Listen, I’ll see her Monday.” I said, “I think it’s just a detox. It’s the body’s ability to just get this stuff out of her system.” So sure enough, that was on a Thursday. I saw her Monday in the office and the eczema is completely clear. Her skin is completely intact. It can happen that fast when you can identify the cause.

Trevor:             That’s amazing because I think a lot of times people think of eczema as being a long battle. It’s something that I had as a child, and it was definitely a long drawn-out battle until we found more of a holistic approach. But I think that that’s oftentimes the thoughts that people have about eczema is that it’s going to take months for recovery. Now, you’re talking about a child and children do tend to, like you said, they have these strong vital forces, and they tend to recover more quickly.

Trevor:             What about adults? Because that’s going to be the majority of the people watching, listening to this interview. They’re people that are adults suffering with eczema. What kind of time span are we talking about for adults? How quickly should people see results?

Kendra:            You know, it goes back to those tenets of naturopathic medicine. You’re removing the obstacles to cure, so if you pick the right obstacle, and you remove it, it’s very, very quickly. I had a patient very recently who had seen every doctor, had done a couple of biologics, had such severe eczema on his hands, it was causing him … he was having social anxiety about it. He didn’t want to shake hands with people. He didn’t want to talk with his hands. He comes in the office and he says to me, I said, “How long has this been going on?” He says, “30 years.” I said, “30 years?” He said, “Yeah. 30 years.” We did a few things. He was really a little resistant to the diet and told me he wasn’t going to do the diet until he saw things changing with the supplements I had suggested. Sure enough, within about two weeks the open, seething wounds he had had on the palms of his hands had started to go away. Then he slowly incorporated some of the dietary suggestions that I had given him and his eczema also went away relatively quickly.

Kendra:            Some people, it can be longer because, again, you have to assess where your patient as at. It depends on how many obstacles to cure there really are for that patient.

Trevor:             What do you find are the biggest obstacles in adult eczema?

Kendra:            With adults, number one, it’s usually the diet. The other thing is, is the pharmaceuticals. I don’t want to come here and trash pharmaceutical medication, but we know that pharmaceutical medications are not very well studied in conjunction with each other. One drug may do a wonderful thing for one particular process, but adding another drug is going to give you a whole host of problems. Now, we know pharmaceutical drugs are designed to stop a process. That’s how they work. They inhibit something in the body so that something else can maintain the support of that pathway.

Kendra:            When we do that, sometimes we rob the body of cholecutan, of vitamin D, of essential fatty acids, all these things that we need for our skin in particular, that I find to be the biggest hurdle. Do my patient come into the office and toss all their pharmaceuticals out? Absolutely not. But if they start supporting their own bodies with proper diet, probiotics, fish oils, whatever happens to be that regime for that patient, then the body’s in a better balance state for them to go back to their primary care doctor or their prescriber to say, “Hey. I’m feeling better in this department. Can we talk about reducing or eliminating those pharmaceuticals if you feel it’s appropriate?”

Kendra:            Those are the two things that I see. And I think, too, adults in general we’re indoctrinated in our own routine and in our own ritual. People are always saying to me, “What do you mean I have to give up such and such a food?” Well, it’s causing you harm. If you’ve made the commitment to walk through the door of my office and wait a couple months to get in, why don’t you try this for a couple weeks or a couple months and see if it makes a difference because I’m telling you, you won’t be sorry.

Kendra:            People that show up in my office at least, are sick and tired of being sick and tired. I have pretty good results with making and suggesting diet changes for them. But it’s mostly if I had to pick one thing, like if we were living in a tunnel, I would say it’s mostly the diet. It’s just the body kind of screaming at you saying, “We’ve gotta change something. We’ve gotta balance something.” Here, let’s do it from this perspective first. It’s lucky. You feel lucky.

Trevor:             Right. Also, eczema is one of the signs that the body can give us that something else is out of balance within the body, and we’re talking about addressing root causes. But there are other health conditions that are associated with eczema that oftentimes come along with it, right?

Kendra:            Oh, absolutely. Sometimes you can also see it as a side effect of a disease process, of a pharmaceutical medication, of a whole host of things. Little children in a lot of cases, as you know, can have eczema when they’re growing. Why do they have eczema when they’re growing? Parents sometimes get really upset and I’m like, “Listen. We got a good, healthy brain going on. We can fix this skin. It’ll be all right.” I think that’s really important to point out because it can absolutely be the calm before the storm.

Trevor:             Certainly it can give us information that our body is needing extra nutrients like essential fatty acids and zinc and B vitamins, all of those things. I always talk about skin being our magic mirror giving us great information about our health, and that’s just one of those things. It’s giving you a sign that, “Hey, I need more nutrients. I need more of these.” Unfortunately, the conventional approach is not to go straight to addressing those nutritional deficiencies, but instead to suppress the symptoms. Then the body gets ignored. Those signs are … we suppress those.

Trevor:             Let’s talk about how a lot of people with eczema will also tend to have other types of, you call them the four As. Tell everybody what the four As are.

Kendra:            Sure. Eczema, which is atopy, autism, allergies, and asthma are the four As. Really, what’s really interesting, especially if you look at it from a Chinese medicine standpoint, I think the saying is: there’s a thousand diseases in one cure and one disease in a thousand cures. That’s how I look at my practice, is those four things are giving us indicators that there’s high levels of inflammation.

Kendra:            I have one. I only have 3000 patients on my patient list, but the interesting thing is, when I … they don’t all have eczema, obviously. But the interesting thing is, is the ones with asthma have always had a history of eczema. It’s kind of like the body gave you a sign and some sort of additional imbalance happened, and now we’re triggering the asthma. To me, those are almost directly cause and effect. Certainly, we know things regarding autism. There’s a huge environmental component. There’s a huge component with the immune system that got all of those things, which are all basically the little check boxes that we see with eczema anyway.

Kendra:            Allergies are basically, as we know, the body’s way of rebelling against the environment because something is out of balance. They’re very, very similar in pathology, at least the way that I see them or from a holistic medicine standpoint, for sure. They’re most times interconnected.

Trevor:             Yeah, so let’s talk about the immune system and how that plays a role in these different conditions, including eczema, because I think a lot of times people don’t realize the immune system connection with eczema. Again, a lot of times people think of it as just as a skin disease. It’s not related to other systems, but explain how the immune system is connected to this.

Kendra:            Well, sure. 90% of our immune system is developed in our gut. Immune cells are undifferentiated and leave the thymus of our 14 week fetuses, that any kind of immuno-modulation that happens during that pregnancy is going to trigger the body. If we have an imbalance in TH1 and TH2, which is very specific components of the immune system, we know by research high levels of TH2 mean kids are going to have higher levels of eczema, adults too. But in the research that I generally focus on is pediatrics.

Kendra:            When that happens, we know that the immune system is directly connected with the gut. If we can balance the gut, we can balance the immune system. And we know that that all starts literally from the inside. It’s really interesting when people say … this is one of my things with conventional medicine, is how can you say that a pill is going to change … that I have to take every day is going to help me maintain my health but completely disregard what I put in my mouth for food and nutrition each and every day.

Kendra:            I think that’s really the biggest take-home message, and that’s all we can really do as holistic doctors, is just remind people that literally you are what you eat. Anything that you ingest that the body deems as foreign, is going to mount a reaction and there’s going to be some sort of quote “side effect” from that, whether it be eczema or an anaphylactic reaction or whatever. You have a headache, you have a bellyache. Every body is a little different. But there’s a reaction if there’s an imbalance. You just have to listen to it.

Trevor:             What are other things that you can do besides diet to help support the immune system?

Kendra:            Oh, there’s lots of things. You can go outside in bare feet and walk on the grass. That helps support the immune system. You can just be nice to people. Laughing for one minute raises your immune system for 24 hours, and being angry depletes your immune system for five or six hours. You get a far greater benefit of laughing and being happy and being kind than you ever could with being mad and angry. I think that we spend a lot time as doctors communicating our message about high-quality supplements and this, that, and the other thing when most of our treatment and most of our cure is in our backyard or in our cabinet. I think that’s really the take-home message for all of us as naturopaths.

Trevor:             I’m so glad you brought that up because with eczema, my own history of struggling with it myself, I know how it can bring you down. It can impact your self esteem, you’re embarrassed by your skin, especially if it’s on your face or your hands where you can’t hide it. Or it can impact people wanting to put on a bathing suit if they’ve got a lot of eczema or even shorts or a T-shirt. It can bring you down. It is this balance of trying to overcome that with mindset, with stress management. Any tips on that? Any recommendations?

Kendra:            Well, I do want to talk about … because we do have to talk about topical applications. You know, as the skin doctor, we don’t want to put anything on our skin that we don’t want to put in our mouth. I think that’s another place that people get hiccuped with pharmaceuticals. For me, and I’m sure you’ve seen the research, on using topical B12 on eczema and acute reactions is absolutely incredible, and it’s a game-changer for people.

Kendra:            Then, also too, you have to identify where you’re at in your eczema pathology because if you have seething wounds and things like that, you’re going to need something to dry it out. If you have really dry, cracked skin, you’re going to need some sort of barrier moisturizer like shea butter or coconut oil or things like that. I think those are really good quote “life hacks” that, again, most of us have at home in our own cabinets that we can just go to before we get an appointment with a fancy dermatologist for a punch biopsy or whatever your disease process, the pathway that it takes you down.

Kendra:            I think those are really good tips but honestly, I think all of it really starts in the gut. So I think if we have little life hacks that we can use on our skin topically to mitigate the symptoms, but we’ve already understood that there’s a warning and make the changes from within and from deeper within our bodies, I would hope that most everybody would have a very, very quick and direct path to quote “cure” or elimination.

Trevor:             Yeah, and I feel like it’s about 80% internal, but there’s still that 20% of what you’re putting on your skin. We don’t want to ignore one or the other. I think a lot of times people focus on one or the other, but not both. Spending a lot of time addressing those internal root causes but also what are you putting on your skin. I find that compounding pharmacies are great places to get topical things, so you can get … because people always say to me, “Where do I find these kinds of nutrients for my skin without the petroleum by-products and the parabens and all the things that are used?” Well, compounding pharmacies can help make out things, especially if you’re working with a functional medicine doctor or naturopathic physician, it’s a great tool that I use in my practice to help get those topicals.

Kendra:            Right. Oh, absolutely. That’s a really good point. Even around here, a lot of my patients will use compounding pharmacies that are in the northwest corner of the country. They just tend to be more amenable and adaptable and easy to access so it’s absolutely true.

Trevor:             Yeah, because they can ship. They can send things. You don’t have to walk in and pick up. They’ll mail it to you.

Kendra:            Exactly. Right.

Trevor:             There’s great tools out there. Then, when we get to the point where we’re using this combination approach of using things on the skin to calm it down, to soothe it. I find that sometimes it’s a combination approach in the beginning when somebody’s really inflamed, maybe you do have to use a little bit of pharmaceutical agents to calm things down til you can get to the place where natural medicine can work better. Do you feel the same way?

Kendra:            I have. In the beginning of my career, I did actually. What I would say is, especially if patients came in from … because here in Connecticut naturopaths cannot prescribe pharmaceutical medications, so if they would come into my practice from a dermatologist or something and had some sort of a steroid cream, and they would say, “I’m using this but I’m using an entire tube in a week or whatever.” I would say, “Take what you have and mix it with whatever it was that I was prescribing, and use half the dose.” So I did in the beginning use that very, very frequently where, like you said, you use a little bit of palliative treatment just to suppress the angriness of the skin so your patient doesn’t get a secondary bacterial infection because we don’t want that either.

Kendra:            In the meantime, you certainly do start working with the gut. But really, lately quite honestly in the last four or five years, knock on wood, don’t prove me wrong now, I’ve had the good pleasure of not really actually needing it.

Trevor:             That’s so great, especially if you don’t have that available to you and you have to get creative and figure out what else do we have here? Especially if your patients know this is not even an option that I can use. I have to use an all-natural approach. That’s really the best way to go because you know that’s what you have and that’s all you have. I think that’s great. I certainly always start with that and see where we can get with people with using a completely natural approach because it’s definitely the better route to use because with the pharmaceutical drugs, they can provide relief but they come with a lot of side effects.

Kendra:            Absolutely. Like you said, they’re full of the petroleum products and the parabens and all these things that we’re trying to actively avoid on our skin anyway. Absolutely right.

Kendra:            What I always say is I’ve never been anti-conventional medicine. I worked as a nurse for eight years prior to becoming a naturopath. I have a very deep foray in a conventional paradigm, but, like I say to my patients, you’re coming here and we’re not going to kill a mosquito with a bazooka. You know what I mean? Let’s use the treatment that fits the condition. If we have to go out of this realm, I will be happy to set you up with whoever it is that I feel would treat you the best, for sure.

Trevor:             We need to all work together to help our patients and I think it’s good for people listening, watching to know that it’s not, you have to choose one path or the other. You don’t have to choose naturopathic medicine or conventional medicine. There is, I think, an opportunity these days to work with people that can be a team that can work together. I think there’s a lot the naturopathic physicians and functional medicine doctors can do, but sometimes it’s nice to have a whole team of people depending upon where you are in your health.

Kendra:            Absolutely.

Trevor:             I oftentimes hear that. People will say to me, “I’m not telling my regular doctor about you because I’m worried they’re going to be upset.”

Kendra:            Exactly. I know. I never could understand that. I’m like, “Who is it? I probably know him.” It’s a small state. But it always puzzled me that, going forward, that people didn’t want to have full disclosure because, to me, I would think it’s a disservice to the patient’s care to not know all these aspects about them.

Kendra:            But, with regard to MTHFR, just circling back there for a second, I do want to tell you an interesting story. 12 years ago, people kind of laughed. I would send patients for recommendations with surgery with specific requirements if they were positive for MTHFR and things like that, and the doctors would crumple up the paper and toss it in the trash. Very recently I had a patient who left my practice. They relocated to Michigan and the child needed to have surgery. He was positive for MTHFR and a couple other health challenges. The mother went in with my fancy list because I had a list and said to the anesthesiologist, “I’m very concerned about his MTHFR mutation and anesthesia, and this, that and the other thing.” Well, the anesthesiologist pulled out of his pocket the most recent study that had just come across some major medical place that talked about MTHFR and kids with anesthesia. She called me literally from the PACU and said, “You’re not going to believe the experience I just had. This was amazing.”

Kendra:            So it is medicine that is coming around. I think the more that we acknowledge it in both holistic and conventional medicine, the healthier and the safer our patients are going to be. That goes for all conditions. It’s just kind of nice to know what we’re getting there. I think people will have a greater understanding of eczema as well moving forward once they understand that there’s so many biologic pathways that are involved with it.

Trevor:             Yeah. It’s really exciting to see what’s happening with epigenetics and nutrigenomics and things that the study of our genes and how they express and what we can do about it. Very exciting as well as the microbiome research, gut microbiomes, skin microbiomes, very exciting time to be a doctor and helping people to see all this-

Kendra:            It is.

Trevor:             … all this research coming out. Well, I really want to thank you for coming on my podcast today, Kendra, and sharing all this information. You’ve been a wealth of knowledge. So thank you so much. Tell everybody where they can find you.

Kendra:            Sure. I’m at drkendrabecker.com or fwcct.com, that’s my office website. I have a brand new book coming out, Trevor. I can’t wait to send you a copy. It’s called All You Can Eat. How do you like that? It goes through all of the healing diets and all of the different recipe modifications for people that are looking to heal from the inside. That will be out, God willing, by the end of this month. It’s like birthing a baby, actually, it takes a lot longer. You can find me at Mindshare. I will be at AutismOne this year for any of your viewers who follow autism stuff. I’ll be at AutismOne in May. I’ll be down in Atlanta with RFK, Jr in April. That’s all the exciting stuff I have going for the spring.

Trevor:             All right. Well, thanks again for coming on, Kendra. It’s great to connect with you.

Kendra:            Thank you so much

Trevor:             I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Dr. Kendra Becker and got some information that’s valuable to you on how to address eczema and other conditions that are associated with it. To learn more about Dr. Becker and to get information about her book and the article that she mentioned, just go to thespadoctor.com. Go to the podcast page with her interview, and you’ll find all the information and links there.

Trevor:             And while you’re there, I invite you to join The Spa Doctor community so you don’t miss any of our upcoming shows. You could also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. We’re also available there on both audio and video so you can listen and watch at your convenience. I also invite you to join The Spa Doctor community on social media, on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. And if you haven’t done so already, I highly recommend you get your customized skin report at theskinquiz.com. It’s a free quiz that I put together online. It takes just a few moments and it will give you information about which skin type you are, the root causes, what to do about it. Just go to theskinquiz.com.

Trevor: I’ll see you next time on The Spa Doctor Podcast.